Periodic Reporting for period 1 - MEND (Modeling Energy for Sustainable Development in Ethiopia)
Periodo di rendicontazione: 2020-11-15 al 2022-11-14
Energy production and consumption are inextricably linked with the economy and the environment. The quantity and type of energy play crucial roles in shaping the sustainable development path of a country. The interlinkages are particularly important in low-income countries such as Ethiopia where biomass fuels account for more than 85% of the total energy consumed. Access to reliable energy enhances economic productivity and fosters industrialization. However, depending on the fuel type, energy consumption may result in detrimental effects on the quality of the environment and human health. As such, for a meaningful policy impact, energy research in developing countries should assess the linkages between energy, economy, and the environment. The project Modeling Energy for Sustainable Development in Ethiopia – MEND (15/11/2020 – 14/11/2022) aimed to assess the implications of alternative energy system pathways to the economy, quality of the environment, human health, and the SDGs in Ethiopia.
The project attempted to highlight the main features of the energy sector in Ethiopia, to identify the potential data sources, and to choose an appropriate modeling approach suitable for analyzing the energy-economy-environment (E3) nexus in the contexts of the country. It organized detailed energy supply and demand data from various national and international sources. It assessed the energy, economic, and environmental aspects related to solid biomass fuels. It also provided a macroeconomic insight on the role of domestic biogas sector in the country. It calibrated of a dynamic computable general equilibrium (CGE) model for Ethiopia. Most of the project results are published as open access articles and presented at several conferences while efforts to publish CGE model-based results are ongoing.
The MEND project has placed a particular effort to incorporate as many as energy fuels relevant in the present and the future contexts of Ethiopia. The CGE model calibration improved the representations of the interlinkages between energy, economy, and the environment. The Ethiopian power sector is disaggregated into fifteen electricity-generation sources, of which six are basin-specific hydropower sources. Biomass fuels from agricultural wastes and electricity consumption by agricultural (irrigation) activities are explicitly represented. Besides, utmost efforts have been made to make the data and overall modeling framework flexible and usable to other SDG-related research questions (e.g. climate change, poverty, nutrition). Efforts are also ongoing to construct a comprehensive energy satellite account and to apply a techno-economic assessment energy model using the data from the project. Overall, the project results seek to provide insights on and to contribute to the scientific and policy discourses on the energy-economy-environment nexus in developing countries.