ABUJA, Nigeria's First Annual International Renewable Energy Conference (IREC) was launched with great success at the Sheraton Hotel in Abuja October 16-20, 2006. The event included workshops, presentations, exhibitions, a roundtable and a closing dinner with esteemed guests and hundreds of participants from Nigeria, China, USA, Germany, Spain and the UK.

IREC's ambitious mission is to develop and execute programmes and events that will encourage cooperation between major stakeholders in RE, implement capacity building programmes for the industry, create an environment for commercialization and penetration of RETs in the country and speed up the electrification of rural areas in Nigeria.

IREC 2006 included many concrete actions to advance towards this mission. It specifically stated in the conference guide that IREC is not a talk shop. Workshops trained practitioners in beginner and advanced solar PV, Solar water pumping and solar lighting and were the most organized workshops I've been involved with in Africa according to African Energy's Lincoln Dahl. The exhibition hall provided a chance to interact with renewable energy manufactures, retailers, research programs, financial institutions, and emerging associations and networks. It also included the launch of formal membership registration for the Council for Renewable Energy in Nigeria (see associated news story here).

The program itself opened with dignitaries from the Ministry of Science and Technology, Ministry of Power and Steel, Energy Commission of Nigeria, the Special Adviser to the President on Energy, Special Adviser on Electric Power, and Senior Special Assistant on Power Sector Reform. It continued with a number of informative sessions on topics such as the manufacturing of solar panels in Nigeria, increasing electricity access to rural dwellers, and financing renewable energy in developing countries. In addition, a number of exciting initiatives were presented such as the NNPC's plan to launch a Nigerian biofuels industry and Lahmeyer International's recently completed national wind map for the Ministry of Science and Technology, making Nigeria the first country in the region to have a country-wide wind map and automatic wind measurement systems.