ENERGY EDUCATION: PANACEA TO SUSTAINABLE AND AFFORDABLE ACCESS TO CLEAN ENERGY·.
Energy plays a pivotal role in societal development. It cuts across every facet of human activities – health, economics, agriculture, transportation, education, sports, industry, government, environments, etc., but, presently, access to affordable energy is a major challenge to a lot of people. This has led to people engaging in unsustainable options to get energy. Despite the avalanche of latest developments in weather and climate technologies to provide clean and affordable energy, majority of those who engage in these unsustainable alternatives are mostly ignorant or they careless about the disastrous effects of their actions on the environment.
This paper argues that ignorance about accessing clean, affordable and sustainable energy options in any society is unhelpful. The place of energy education cannot be overlooked. It is crucial to sustainable development and it will lead to discarding unsustainable energy options and embracing better options. Renewable clean energy alternatives brought to the fore through the latest weather and climate technologies would be better harnessed through energy education. This paper will equally address the factors responsible for the parlous state of clean energy supply among majority of societies.
Some of the solution to the problem includes embracing and sustaining good governance, encouraging the Energy Commission and Energy companies to adopt the best international practices in the discharge of their assignments by exploiting the latest weather and climate technology to facilitate the enthronement of products from clean energy innovation. Energy must not only be made available, it must be affordable to the people. Energy wastages and leakages must be blocked. The energy consumers too must be prepared to pay for energy that they consume. The paper concludes on the one hand that avoidable future catastrophic consequences associated with unsustainable uses of available energy could be reversed through timely environmental and energy education. On the other hand, it concludes that the latest weather and climate technologies within the framework of the Energy Charter Treaty are some of the solutions to sustainable clean energy provided that adequate enlightenment is done. The future is really bright.