Politics of Energy Transitions: A decade after Nigeria’s biofuels crusade, a tale of non-commercialisation and lost opportunities

There is a growing literature on the politics of sustainability transitions and its correlation with policy changes at the national level. This paper contributes to this debate by taking stock of energy transition processes in Nigeria's biofuels sector. It explores the socio-economic externalities that influenced the biofuels policy, how this policy process was negotiated and why it failed. Based on expert interviews and document analysis, it was observed that a drop in oil production and the need for economic diversification (GDP growth) created a favourable condition for the development of biofuels in 2005. However, the biofuels policy was insufficiently articulated when the window of opportunity opened. In the last 10 years, fluctuations in oil prices and changes in government have closed the window of opportunity for biofuels. Taken together, the results suggest that to successfully engineer transition, policy processes of this nature require a re-articulation of vision based on emerging externalities. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment