Ugo Aliogo and Shalom Uzochukwu
The Managing Director, Steing Bank Plc, Mr. Abubakar Suleiman, has stated that sustainable energy remains vital in meeting the energy needs of big corporates, and organisations.
Suleiman, who disclosed this yesterday in Lagos, during a media briefing said as the bank commitment to promoting sustainable energy, they would be embarking establishing a data center at the head office which he described as the most sensitive use case of solar powered energy.
He also stated that the bank is partnering with Creative Youth Community Development Initiative (CYCDI) on a campaign tagged #NaijaClimateNow, to implement solutions towards climate change adaptation in Nigeria as part of its commitment and significant contributions to a better and safer ecosystem.
He noted that the bank has been promoting practices that protect the environment for the benefit of humanity through its corporate social responsibility initiative known as the Sterling Environmental Makeover (STEM).
Suleiman further explained that STEM, which was launched more than a decade ago as a cleaning exercise promoting sanitation and hygiene, has over the years evolved into a national movement championing the cause of the environment.
In his words: “We have built the core of our business strategy around what is known as the HEART sector. The acronym stands for Health, Education, Agriculture, Renewable and Transportation. The R in the acronym stands for renewable energy. The goal is that by putting renewable energy within the HEART sector is that all the other four sectors will gravitate towards using renewable sources because it is part of our business. The programme currently covers public enlightenment campaigns, partnership with waste management agencies in almost all the States of the federation, tree planting initiatives to combat desertification in parts of Northern Nigeria, and an annual national cleaning exercise. Within the renewable energy space, we have done some activities with government. We have funded quite a few businesses that have helped government in putting solar street lights instead of running generators in the streets. At the lower end of it, there is a transaction we closed this year, where we are collaborating to power 1,000 homes that are currently offgrid working with the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) as our commercial partner. This is important because if you don’t get those 1,000 homes clean energy, by the time they get on the grid, they will be getting dirty energy.
“Sterling Bank has committed more than a billion Naira to the programme since its inception. Whenever we have a conversation about climate change it is something that we should take serious and be committed to, because it is a conversation that we will live to see the consequences if we don’t do anything about it. The conversation about climate change is beyond politics, media and other areas of human endeavours, it is something that affects us all. Our job as a corporation is to deploy all of our human resources, to rethink the challenge and turn into an opportunity.”
It was learnt from the briefing that as a build-up to the C0P26 – UN Climate Change Conference, scheduled to take place in Glasgow, Scotland, on November 1-12, CYCDI would be organising a Climate Change Exhibition, “art Exhibition titled: ‘Naija Climate Now; Race To Zero Emission’ would be hosted by The British Deputy High Commission on October 7.
