It is no longer news that SUSTAINABILITY is becoming the norm. Economies, businesses, nations are in one way or the other evolving sustainable approaches to meet with key targets set out in the SDGs for 2030.

For instance, businesses are adopting cost-saving measures that will see them limiting energy usage, travels, stationaries and over-head costs. Some measures being adopted by businesses for instance include hybridization, wherein existing businesses (regimes) incorporate niche innovators (disruptors) to remain relevant. Think about Centrica’s announcement of adopting blockchain as a potential solution to unlocking the benefits of demand side management. Others are totally overhauling themselves (not rebranding) to meet with the expectations of modern day while those resistant to change are being bought over by niche innovators. In summary, it’s getting crazy out there. Governments are not left out. Despite Trumps decision to pull America out of the Paris Accord, nations across the globe are making efforts to green their countries and somehow keep emissions at pre-determined levels.

Amid this chaos, one sector that has evolved drastically is the education sector. Disciplines are evolving to ensure that their graduates remain relevant in this chaos. From finance to energy to healthcare etc., graduates are being equipped with diverse skills and exposed to a lot of multidisciplinary courses to prepare them for LIFE.

I will however focus on the energy sector in this write-up and briefly discuss how everyone from humanities to arts to engineering, the social sciences and sciences are creating relevance for themselves in the transition towards a low-carbon environment.

Basically, a low-carbon energy transition is a journey from dominant fossil fuel based electricity generation sources like coal and oil to less polluting sources like natural gas, biomass (wood) and ultimately wind, solar, hydro. Geothermal etc. The problem however, is that low-carbon energy transitions have not been successful as hyped. Take Germany for instance, its Energiewende program has resulted in renewable energy levies increasing by over 3000% while household electricity bills have increased by over 100% between 2000 and 2014. In addition, Germany is set to miss its 2020 emissions target due to increased burning of lignite (coal) and reduced utilisation of natural gas. Similarly, increasing renewable energy penetration in California has seen electricity bills increasing by more than 50%. Australia is back to increased carbon emissions for three consecutive years because of its lack of a national plan while South Africa’s REIPPPP is already deemed to be dead on arrival because of declining electricity consumption, high poverty levels (estimated by STATSSA to be about 55%) and over-capacity. These examples amongst the many existing have been provided as background to our next discussion.

Historically, disciplines have evolved independent of each other. It was strange 20 years ago to hear of courses such as bioengineering or bioinformatics etc. In addition, sectors to work in after graduation were straightforward. A graduate of geography was needed in regional planning/boundary commission/mapping while political scientists were more poised to go into academia or politics. There were no courses like artificial intelligence or transition scientist or climate change scientist etc. Life was normal and things were simple. Gradually, things changed. The existing landscape was challenged with the advent and increasing use of computers and IT. Barriers across disciplines were broken. Some disciplines evolved, others went moribund. And then came the news – humanity was in danger of extinction. Our growth and development had come at an awful cost to the environment and unless drastic changes were made, mankind was looking at the end.

Since it would have been foolish to confront the enormous challenge facing mankind with conventional wisdom, the need arose for the creation of new knowledge to help inform the world on how best it could tackle this problem of climate change. Renewables were identified as key and then the rush began. However, considering the growth of knowledge, the fun began. Governments outlined national plans that set forth ambitious targets for renewables, scientists worked hard (and are working) on creating more efficient solar panels and bigger wind turbines while traditional engineers worked out the technical aspect of integrating renewables with the grid. In other not to be left out. The non-technical disciplines evolved theorems. Political scientists evolved the energy justice framework to study how electrification projects were creating injustice (distributional, procedural, recognition) and further evolved frameworks like STS and MLP to theorize on the evolution of theorems. Today we have a lot of professionals from sociologists to psychologists to energy justice experts along with other traditional experts like political scientists, geographers, engineers and scientists having fun with energy transition.

In these happenings, it seems the Nigerian youth is unaware of how much the world outside has changed and is changing. Universities are yet to have their curricula upgraded years after thus leaving their graduates worse than obsolete. As I interact with the leading experts in the transition phase I am shocked to see that it’s still all just a bunch of white folks. Research outputs from Nigeria are now outdated. Techno-economic analyses are now redundant if they cannot successfully inform policy formulation. Environmental analysis must go beyond hybrid systems design to real analysis that show how such systems can for instance guarantee sufficient electricity that is available and guarantees mobility for households while minimizing carbon emissions.

The Nigerian youth who wants to thrive in this crazy era must wise up. You must begin to take advantage of the internet to inform your career moves. What are you interested in – fintech? Sustainability? Healthcare? Agriculture? Then begin assessing reports online (Bloomberg, The Economist, Forbes etc.) on how your area of interest is being disrupted. Use such information to figure out how you can sync your studies with your interests. Seek out leading experts in your fields and read up on their publications. Utilise Library Genesis and scihub and ResearchGate and academia.edu and other sites to access free articles and books online. Start developing useful skills in your area of interest. Begin to create visibility for yourself. Write papers and throw out to international conferences. Write the organisers seeking for funding. Volunteer services to help during the conferences. Network through twitter and other academic sites with your peers and seek out collaborations. Don’t be a local champion. Opportunities abound out there for serious students, but then you must deserve them.

You cannot blame anyone for what you turn out to be tomorrow. You must take charge of your future. Your lecturers can’t be blamed neither can the government. The chaos in the country is a blessing in disguise. The competition is getting stiff. Young folks are overachieving very early. Most companies involved in policy advice/consulting will not hire you without a policy paper. Prestigious scholarships now have publications as part of their scoring. Read, dear Nigerian youth please read. Read wide, read deep. Read things outside your primary discipline. I have found myself navigating from engineering to computer science to political science and policy/governance. In these movements/responsibilities, I bring to bear my varied disciplines which distinguish my output. It’s always fun discussing justice and egalitarianism in the same paper where I have just performed load flow analysis and some socio-techno-economic analysis.

What you read is becoming irrelevant. My recent research collaborators do not have engineering background. Their grounding is in the core social sciences but they have outputs in the top energy journals. When I changed discipline for my doctorate, I was ridiculed. Nobody will employ you in electrical neither will CS employ you. Why are you jumping to a lesser degree? Are you confused? We won’t need you if you don’t remain in electrical. You will struggle getting a job. I have just turned in my completed dissertation and I sit back and laugh now. My publications are doing the talking for me now! Hey, we have a postdoc position that we think you will find interesting (and I’m like, ah, thanks, I will get back to you!). if I listened to detractors, I will never have found fulfilment in my new research area. I am having a blast and enjoying what I’m doing. It has been tough, but hey, it’s paying off.

Ignore detractors and push on. The road will not be easy. I reminisce on my undergraduate days back in UI. Ah, the sleepless nights at anatomy reading room. It was hell reading journal papers as an undergraduate that didn’t make any sense back then. Today, they make a lot of sense. Humanity is moving on whether Nigeria moves or not. Life is too short to spend accusing people for wrong decisions!