CHAPTER ONE
1.0      INTRODUCTION
1.1   BACKGROUND OF STUDY
Solar radiation (a renewable energy resource) has direct impact on energy generation in addition to agriculture and water resources. The energy resource was observed to be affected by climate changes induced by CO2 emissions (Pan et al., 2004). With enormous solar potential across Nigeria, a moderate seasonal effect of climate change can have significant socio-economic impacts; change of solar radiation in future climate is thus of considerable interest (Pan et al., 2004).
High resolution reliable projections of 21st century climate change are of great importance to assess related impacts on renewable energy resources (directly on solar energy and indirectly on wind and hydro power), human activities and natural ecosystem over the country. African countries are shown to be among the most vulnerable to climatic changes expected for the next decades of the 21st century due to increasing concentrations of atmospheric greenhouse gases (IPCC, 2007; Mariotti et al., 2011).
Furthermore, among African regions, West Africa is found as one of the world most exposed to the negative effects of climate variability (Tchotchou and Kamga, 2010). In Nigeria, Climate change is the latest challenge to sustainable human development and is leading to more frequent and more severe climate-related impacts that may deter efforts to achieve the country’s development objectives, including the targets of the Nigeria Vision 20:2020 and the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) NEST and Tegler, 2011; NASPA-CCN, 2011; the challenges being multifaceted (social, economic, environmental), its impact on infrastructure will be significant because infrastructure provides a critical platform for the effective functioning of the Nigerian economy (NEST and Tegler, 2011).
Climate change is also expected to negatively affect the already limited electrical power supply through impacts on the existing hydroelectric and thermal generation; service interruption is also expected to result from damage to transmission lines and substation equipment impacted by sea level rise, flash floods, and other extreme weather events (NASPA-CCN, 2011). Climate change was discussed in (Li et al., 2012) to have effect on weather parameters (wind speed, solar radiation, precipitation, mean temperature, maximum and minimum temperatures etc.) that constitute the renewable resources.
Several authors have also shown that potential climatic changes due to increased atmospheric greenhouse gases might affect the availability of renewable resources in West Africa in the future. However, changes (increase or decrease) in resource potentials resulting from climate change consequences may affect power generation from renewable energy resources and can consequently affect the potential contribution to future electricity output.