Cement Industry and Climate Change in Nigeria: A Case Study of Dangote Obajana Cement Plant

Abstract

Climate change has emerged as a global issue and one of the world's most pressing environmental challenges. Despite the contribution of the cement industry to the releases of carbon dioxide (the most significant contributor to GHG emissions) in Nigeria, only a few research writing focused on its influence on climate change. This paper, therefore, studied the variation in concentration of carbon dioxide (CO₂) within the environment of the Dangote Obajana Cement Plant. The CO₂ data used for the study were collected from the European Space Agency website. The satellite image data were downloaded from Google Earth and digitized to extract the study area using the WGS1984 geographic coordinate system while ArcMap packages were used for the data processing. The annual descriptive statistics for CO₂ variation for the years 2003, 2008, and 2018, showed that the minimum mean concentration was 373.451.07, 382.92054, and 0.950.17 while the maximum mean concentration was 374.931.0, 384.780.69, and 0.970.17. Bartlett's test for equal variances, with chi-squares statistics of 103.44 and 12.33, and a probability (Prob>chi2) value of 0.001 established that the minimum and maximum CO₂ emissions variances within the years are significantly different. The Bonferroni test revealed that all the years had CO₂ emissions that were significantly different from one another as their p-value was less than 0.05 with the minimum emission occurring in 2018 and the maximum in 2008. The study concluded that the influence of the Dangote Obajana Cement Plant's operation on the release of CO₂ concentrations across the study areas was insignificant since there was no uniformity in their concentrations.