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Empower Nigeria - Program Information Development Problem: Over 200 million people live in Nigeria and its population is projected to be the third most populous country in the world by 2050. The World... Empower Nigeria - Program Information Development Problem: Over 200 million people live in Nigeria and its population is projected to be the third most populous country in the world by 2050. The World Bank indicates that 85 million Nigerians (43 percent of the population) don’t have access to electricity, making Nigeria the country with the largest electricity access deficit in sub-Saharan Africa. Even for those that have access to electricity, the reliability and quality of supply is low, resulting in an estimated economic loss of $26 billion annually according to the World Bank[1]. To help address the low level of reliability and quality of supply, businesses and residents have invested in a range of small to medium scale fossil fuel generators with a combined capacity that dwarfs the country’s installed on-grid generation capacity[2]. This self generation with fossil fuel has increased greenhouse gas emissions and resulted in a higher cost of electricity. While efforts have been made to increase access through several initiatives, programs, and the promotion of clean technologies, the triple challenge of providing reliable and high quality electricity supply, reducing greenhouse gas emissions, and providing affordable electricity supply to consumers, still persist. These challenges have constrained sustainable development of the country affecting critical sectors of the economy: industrialization, health care, education, agriculture/food security, and economic opportunities. Purpose of Program: The purpose of the Empower Nigeria program is to increase the availability of and access to affordable, reliable, sustainable and modern[3] electricity services in Nigeria. This program will connect more Nigerian homes, businesses, and institutions to electricity on the grid and beyond the grid; reduce greenhouse gas emissions from the energy sector by supporting cleaner electricity generation delivered by the grid and accelerating distributed renewable energy (DRE); and, working in partnership with the Government of Nigeria and other institutions to improve the enabling environment for energy sector investment (including climate finance) and innovation. More concretely, Empower Nigeria will seek to advance the following objectives in Nigeria: Ongrid Sector: To Improve the financial sustainability and flow of energy through the national electricity grid through targeted interventions in the distribution sector and to a secondary degree transmission systems to achieve the following end-state: The majority of Nigerian distribution companies achieve positive cash flows, due to a combination of increasing residential, commercial and industrial sales of energy (MWh), declining ATC&C losses and other turnaround efforts; The Nigerian grid’s peak load regularly exceeds 7,000 MW; 500 MW of grid scale-connected solar reaches financial close (distribution/transmission level including embedded generation); and Discos expand use of demand side management. Given the binding constraint presented by the distribution sector’s insolvency and limited capacity, as well as the transmission sector’s capacity constraints, USAID/Power Africa envisages that Empower Nigeria’s on-grid interventions will focus initially on distribution and transmission, with generation interventions occurring more opportunistically in response to demand shifts. Off-grid: The off-grid sector expands and matures, particularly in peri-urban, rural zones and other areas with limited access to the national grid. Success over the life of the program would be the achievement of the following end-state: 500 mini-grids are commissioned and operating profitably; 2 million off-grid connections established; Increased usage of off-grid systems for productive use; Off-grid companies achieve profitability despite declining subsidies; and Increased availability of international/domestic equity and domestic bank financing for off-grid companies. See full Program Description in RFI Attachment.