Reducing Biomass Utilization in the Ethiopia Energy System: A National Modeling Analysis

Zulfikar Yurnaidi,Suduk Kim

doi:10.3390/en11071745

Abstract

With its target of becoming a middle-income country by 2025, Ethiopia has set ambitious targets in its Growth Transformation Plan (GTP) II, such as increasing power generation capacity from 4.18 to 17.21 GW during the 2016–2020 period. However, according to the 2015 IEA energy balance table, Ethiopia depends heavily on biomass for its final energy use. In final energy service sectors, biomass takes more than 90% of the final energy consumption (36.9 out of 40.9 MTOE), 99% of which is consumed in the residential sector. Therefore, it is very important to achieve biomass utilization in the energy sector targets of Ethiopia. This paper aims to analyze the biomass consumption in the Ethiopia energy system, and discuss related policies. An integrated assessment model is chosen for its national energy modeling, and to simulate policy scenarios in a comprehensive and consistent manner. After building a reference case, three scenarios are developed: (1) higher Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and urbanization rate, (2) efficiency improvement of biomass technologies, and (3) sensitivity analysis of urbanization. It is found that biomass still holds the largest share of energy consumption in the future, which increases even more in the high GDP and urbanization scenario. Increasing efficiency of biomass technology can reduce biomass consumption, but the “rebound effect” is observed, which increases the energy service demand, thus dampening the effect of biomass efficiency improvement.

Highlights

Economic growth, measured by Gross Domestic Product (GDP), is usually correlated with energy or electricity consumption growth
This can be achieved through the increased energy services that can be enjoyed by the same amount and commercial sectors of Ethiopia
Abundant energy service provided by efficient utilization of biomass building sector is reduced due to higher biomass technology efficiency, the energy service output, for reduces the need for other forms of energy, such as electricity and refined liquids

Summary

Introduction

Economic growth, measured by GDP, is usually correlated with energy or electricity consumption growth. There can be a unidirectional causality from economic growth to energy consumption [1]. High economic growth can induce high energy consumption, due to the increase in purchasing power. Economic growth can be modeled as a function of production inputs, including energy. To support and achieve a high level of economic growth, the supply of energy should be increased. The exact causality between the two is inconclusive, and depends on various factors, as discussed in Ozturk [2], which surveys the literature of energy/electricity arrays and the economic growth nexus

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Conclusion