Energy in Ethiopia includes energy and electricity production, consumption, transport, exportation, and importation in the country of Ethiopia.
Ethiopia's energy sector is crucial for its development, with wood being a primary energy source, leading to deforestation challenges. The country aims to address economic development and poverty by transitioning to alternative sources, particularly electricity.
Overview
The following table provides some of the most relevant energy sector numbers for Ethiopia, a developing country. The primary energy sector is by far the most important one in Ethiopia, with mainly wood used for cooking. That together with the population growth in Ethiopia results in issues like deforestation. Ethiopia aims at economic development and removal of poverty and to replace the use of wood by alternatives. This makes the secondary energy sector (with electricity) most relevant for these efforts. Almost all recent developments are taking place in the secondary energy sector, with the construction of mainly hydropower plants and power transmission lines being most visible.
Energy in Ethiopia Primary energy (PE) Secondary energy (SE) Population TPES PE perperson PEproduction PE fromimports SE fromimports Electricitygeneration (EG) EG/TPES*100 CO2-emission Million TWh MWh TWh TWh TWh TWh % Mt 2004 74.5 418 5.6 400 0 16.4 2.54 0.61 4.8 2007 80.9 456 5.6 435 0 23.3 3.55 0.78 5.39 2010 87.6 496 5.7 473 0.2 26.0 4.98 1.00 5.96 2013 94.6 546 5.8 515 2.1 34.0 8.72 1.60 8.50 2014 97.0 563 5.8 529 2.3 37.3 9.62 1.71 9.13 Change 2004–2013 27% 31% 3.5% 29% — 107% 243% 180% 77% Mtoe (as provided by the IEA) = 11.63 TWh TPES (Total Primary Energy Supply) includes energy losses PE production is the produced PE without losses PE imports does not necessarily mean that their energy is released (imports can also be converted into engineering materials or into energy carriers). PE: Ethiopia did not export PE in the years shown. PE: all PE imports were bituminous materials (natural asphalt used as engineering material for the construction of roads). SE: Ethiopia did export electricity, a single-digit percentage of the generated electricity, the annual amount is not shown in the table. SE: SE imports are refined oil products only. SE: In 2014, SE imports were mainly gasoline (2.7 TWh), kerosene (8,7 TWh) and diesel (20.1 TWh).
Primary energy sector Primary energy is produced through the consumption of natural resources, renewable and nonrenewable.
Primary energy use
All imported primary energy sources are natural asphalt. That material is exclusively used for roads construction but is not used to produce primary energy (heat/enthalpy).
Therefore, Ethiopia produces its primary energy exclusively from inland resources. These inland resources are almost entirely traditional renewables from biomass and biofuels (like wood) and wastes. A common type of renewable biofuel is wood for heating or cooking in households, a type of resource, that is increasingly overused and overconsumed due to the Ethiopian population growth. Current natural reproduction of wood does not cover the annual use of 37 million tonnes of wood, 50% of the Ethiopian wood reserves of 1,120 million tonnes are exploited. Consequently, deforestation is a common problem in Ethiopia with all of its negative implications. Due to the population growth, energy demand is increasing, which is increasingly (due to the stressed primary energy sources) covered by secondary energy imports, see the table.
Nevertheless, the use of primary energy is also increasing. In part this is due to a more efficient use of agricultural wastes. Ethiopia has agricultural wastes "reserves" of 38 million tonnes per annum, but in 2011 only 6 million tonnes of them were used. This changes now. Such wastes can be used in households or in industrial processes, for example in thermal processing.
Beyond the renewables, Ethiopia also has resources of nonrenewable primary energies (oil, natural gas, coal), but it does not exploit them. It also does not export them.
Energy reserves Solid and liquid fuels Ethiopia currently relies much on its reserves of wood for energy generation, see the table. Ethiopia in 2013 had 1,120 million tonnes of exploitable wood reserves.
Ethiopia also has liquid and solid hydrocarbon reserves (fossil fuels): oil by 253 million tonnes of oil shales and more than 300 million tonnes of coal. There are no plans in Ethiopia to exploit them and to use them for energy generation. The last time there were plans, in 2006, a 100 MW coal power plant (the Yayu coal power plant) with a nearby coal mine was under consideration. Due to severe environmental concerns all plans were stopped and cancelled in September 2006. The expected environmental destruction was considered to be way too severe.
Coal While coal reserves in Ethiopia are estimated to be at 300 million tons nationally. 2020/2021 production reached 500,000 tons. Additionally, the country spends $200 million annually to import 670,000 tons, mainly from South Africa. Cement, textile, marble and ceramic factories are among the largest users of coal. There are ongoing plans to improve the coal calorific value and to increase production, aiming at substituting this import with the locally mined product.Ashenafi Endale, Can Ethiopia's coal bonanza substitute imports (Ethiopian business review, 2021). https://ethiopianbusinessreview.net/can-ethiopias-coal-bonanza-substitute-imports/
Natural gas
Natural gas makes up the most exploitable form of hydrocarbon reserves: a total of of natural gas reserves were found in two gas field in Ethiopia's Ogaden basin, the Calub and Hilala gas fields. All the gas will be exported to China, production wells are under construction in 2017. The two gas fields should be in production by 2019. Initial plans are to pump out 4 billion m3 per year.
Transport of primary energy sources Road transport The currently used biomass / biofuels for primary energy production in most cases do not need to be transported over more than local distances. This can be done by simple roads. The reason is simple: Ethiopia was (and still is to some extent) a subsistence economy, where the vast majority of goods is produced and consumed locally within a few kilometers around the home of people.
Pipelines A pipeline will be built to transport natural gas from the Calub and Hilala gas fields to a LNG terminal in the Port of Djibouti. This pipeline will be around 800 km in length and should be in operation by 2020. It will be a pipeline for 4 billion m3 per year. There are also low-priority plans to connect the triangle Kenya, South Sudan and Ethiopia through crude oil pipelines as part of the Kenyan LAPSSET-corridor.
Secondary energy sector Overview Secondary energy is produced by the consumption of secondary energy sources, more often called energy carriers. It is official policy worldwide and also in Ethiopia to replace primary energy through secondary energy and energy carriers are the vehicles to store this secondary energy. By doing so, the need to use primary energy for energy production in daily life will be replaced by the need to use energy carriers for energy production. This will relieve some pressure from the sources of primary energy in Ethiopia (wood, forests) and will also prevent the country from using its own domestic and nonrenewable primary energy such as coal and oil shales.
Energy carriers are obtained through a man-made conversion process from primary energy sources. Most suitable for the production of energy carriers are abundant and renewable primary energy sources (like sun, water, wind, etc.) while the use of precious and limited nonrenewable sources like oil is usually avoided as much as possible. A direct use of such abundant renewable primary energy sources (sun, water, etc...) is often not possible in technical processes, so it is more feasible to produce energy carriers to store and to transport energy that can later be consumed as secondary energy.
The three main energy carriers in Ethiopia are refined oil products (diesel, gasoline, kerosene), electricity (from solar radiation, water, wind, heat) and bioethanol (from sugarcane). Bioethanol wasn't produced in substantial quantities until very recently, it makes up 0.4 TWh annually (2017). Electricity is about to replace diesel as the main energy carrier in Ethiopia – but taken all refined oil products altogether (38.5 TWh in 2014), electricity (22.5 TWh in 2016) will still take a few years before it will surpass oil products as main energy carrier. Both the amount of imported refined oil products and the produced electricity are increasing—but the growth rate for electricity is much higher than that for refined oil products. See the table. For a developing country it is usually the other way round.
Refined oil products Diesel fuel is the main refined oil product in Ethiopia. It has a share of 20.1 TWh on the total of 37.3 TWh for refined oil products. Diesel is used for thermal power plants (oil power plant) and for private and public diesel generators in parts of the country, where electrical power from the national grid is an issue. Diesel fuel is the main fuel for trucking. As Ethiopia is leaving the state of a subsistence economy, the demand for the transportation of goods is quickly increasing. In 2017, there is no operational railway in Ethiopia, so the transportation of goods needs trucks and roads. Gasoline, to be used in cars, is only 13% (2.7 TWh) of the value for diesel.
More important than gasoline but not as important as diesel is kerosene with 8.8 TWh. 3.1 TWh of kerosene is used for lighting, as electricity is not everywhere in Ethiopia. The remaining 5.7 TWh of kerosene is used for jet flights by Ethiopian Airlines, the state carrier of Ethiopia. Ethiopian Airlines is maybe the most successful state owned enterprise in Ethiopia, the largest and most successful airline Africas and also the airline with the largest cargo fleet in Africa in 2017. It is the cargo, that is of particular interest for Ethiopia. In recent years, flowers and horticulture products – which require air transport – quickly became one of the main export products of Ethiopia, to Europe and to China in particular.
Bioethanol
Bioethanol is produced in currently ~6 sugar factories in Ethiopia (planned are 12 with bioethanol production facilities in 2020), where sugarcane is converted into sugar and the remaining sugar molasses into bioethanol. The ethanol fuel energy balance from sugarcane molasses can be considered to be favorable. In addition, by using the output from existing cogeneration modules as part of the sugar production processes in Ethiopia, the bioethanol production does not require extra energy, which makes the bioethanol production even more favorable.
In 2017, the annual bioethanol production capacity was at 103,000 m3. Together with planned capacities, the total production capacity in 2020 would amount to almost 300,000m3 per annum. Compared to the bioethanol world production in 2016, the existing bioethanol production makes up only 0.1% of the worldwide bioethanol production. For a poor and developing country like Ethiopia this is still a significant and valuable amount. Ethiopia itself uses its bioethanol to blend gasoline (ethanol is much cheaper than gasoline) and for cooking stoves. The produced amount of bioethanol is considered as energy carrier worth 400 GWh of secondary energy per annum. This is sufficient to blend all the imported motor gasoline to become gasohol/E10, which is mandatory in Ethiopia.
After blending the gasoline, around 60–70 % of the ethanol is left over, this fuel goes into modern cook stoves as is provided to Ethiopia through Project Gaia. These cook stoves are burning fuel more efficiently, do not require wood as fuel and are thought to help protecting the forests of Ethiopia and to prevent deforestation.