Fekadu W.
Xinhua, had on Nov. 28, 2017 stated that Ethiopia has unveiled a new 375 million USD national electricity project. The project, dubbed “Light for all,” will be implemented in the coming seven years across Ethiopia, with an aim to provide electricity to rural areas that currently have no access to power.
According to the Chinese Chronicler, while unveiling the new nationwide electricity power project, Prime Minister Haile-Mariam Desalegn had said that the project has also aimed to create massive job opportunities for Ethiopian youth. The project is said to give due emphasis to renewable energy sources like solar, wind and hydroelectric power. The projects will strive to provide electric power for all Ethiopians, with particular emphasis given to the most marginalized rural parts of the country, and to eradicate power blackouts in them.
Similarly, as part of the effort to thrive green economy, Ethiopia is committed to provide firms that move into new eco-industrial parks 100 percent carbon-free energy, much of it coming from plants like the 1,870 MW Gilgel Gibe III Dam on the Omo River, in southwestern Ethiopia (the 6, 450 MW Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD) being built on the Blue Nile River will also provide clean and cheap energy to industrialists in the near future.
Not only GERD, Ethiopia has so much renewable energy potential. Currently, about 70% of its energy is coming from hydropower. Hence, solar, wind and other renewable energy sources will help diversify Ethiopia’s energy sources and allow it to curb fluctuation of power generation effectively, particularly in dry seasons. Scaling up the output of various power sources will enable to provide reliable complement to hydropower (for instance, Ethiopia’s irradiation levels of 1500 to 200 kilowatt hours per square meter will help boost more solar energy production).
Unlike many of its sub-Saharan neighbors, however, which have embraced economic growth at the expense of environmental protections, Ethiopia has embarked on one of the world’s most daring and ambitious green growth and climate mitigation programs; nothing like it has been tried before, much less in one of the world’s largest and poorest nations.
Economy and environment are so intimately interlinked in the Ethiopian society that systematic attention to green growth is being strengthened with time, as essential element to change the lives of millions and materialize meaningful development. Nation understands the very fact that the majority of poor people are principally dependent on agriculture, which is all in all dependent on farmers’ activity of land management to sustain water supplies, biodiversity and other environmental services.
Such primary activities have dynamic interconnection with the rest of the society and the economy and the relation is becoming intense with time; productivity and quality of life increasing and decreasing with the productivity and deterioration of agricultural activities and environmental protection respectively.
The holistic approach that the Ethiopian Government has recently been implementing has aimed to utilize renewable resources to power generation and to tackle the problems that occur during the process of growth and produce undesirable environmental problems. Taking these realities in to account and assuming potentials of investing in natural assets, Ethiopia is vigorously working to generate green power from water, wind and solar sources, among others; unique attributes that could drive development in ways that are environmentally sound and provide new jobs and satisfying livelihoods.
Matter of fact, Ethiopia is one of the first countries in Africa to develop a green growth strategy. Ethiopia’s leadership, and its early attempts through greening its economy to achieve more inclusive growth, are of real interest for a world in which alternative growth models for long-term sustainable development and social equity have rapidly become a priority in government, business and civil society.
Ethiopia’s progress and prospects in going “green” has already attracted the attention of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and other international organizations, neighboring countries and the domestic and international media. It is clearly a very high-profile policy initiative laying out potential Ethiopian paths towards a green economy.
The main policy driver for green growth in Ethiopia is the Climate Resilient Green Economy Strategy (CRGE). Developed under the leadership of the Prime Minister’s Office and coordinated by Environmental Protection Authority (EPA).The CRGE has made tremendous strides in providing vision, high-level commitment, and credible analysis and planning an extensive portfolio of investments in a very short time.
CRGE’s goal is to increase economic growth and to leap from least-developed to middle-income country status, whilst at the same time reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and increasing climate resilience. Accordingly, the CRGE has two components: a Green Economy Strategy (GES), which mainly tries to address issues of climate change issues and associated mitigation and a Climate Resilience Strategy (CRS), which focuses on adaptation and is currently being developed with a focus on agriculture, forestry and land use.
The CRGE strategy has three complementary objectives including fostering economic development and growth, ensuring abatement and avoidance of future GHG emissions and improving resilience to climate change. And the tactics to be employed to realize these objectives are tapping into international climate finance, which requires an emphasis on demonstrable GHG abatement; seizing opportunities for innovation based on the latest production platforms – “leapfrogging” to the newest and best technology rather than reproducing each evolutionary stage undergone by developed economies and creating competitive advantage out of a focus on sustainable use of resources.
Many believe that “no other African country has even begun to make the level of commitment that Ethiopia has in reducing emissions”. The blueprint for Ethiopia’s climate agenda, drafted by the government in 2011 and currently being implemented across all levels of society, from the rustic villages of the central highlands to the transit corridors of Addis Ababa, is embodied in document to be implemented as “Climate-Resilient Green Economy strategy,” or CRGE.
Much more than an emissions plan, the CRGE is a multipronged development program that promises to hold Ethiopia’s greenhouse gases at 145 metric tons of CO2 equivalent per year over the next 15 years.
In line with green economy and environmental protection, Ethiopia has planned to boost power generation capacity to 10,000 MW from clean energy sources by the end of the GTP-2 period. This aims to support the transformation process in the country including combining economic objectives with tremendous green power production and becoming the region’s main power hub and principal exporter.
However, there are many stumbling blocks to the implementation of both the CRGE and the scaling up of existing green growth solutions. It attributes to limited government capacity in supplying ample technology and sophisticated inputs, employing trained human power and effective systems for tracking environmental, social and economic problems associated with environment; hindrances to bring effective change in green growth.
In addition, inability to amply coordinate green growth agenda with other economic activities, lack of sufficient data and limited knowledge on relevant variables (there is little investment in the people and institutions that collect, study and disseminate data on them) and clashing perspectives on green growth (some stakeholders see green growth as an opportunity to rapidly improve GDP growth, jobs, inward investment and other mainstream economic variables by investing in particular low-carbon technologies; other stakeholders, however, see green growth as a process of realizing greater wellbeing from natural assets, through mainstreaming environmental objectives across all sectors.
Despite the challenges, the government intends to diversify energy sources and wisely exploit renewable and environment-friendly resources (for instance, planning 800 MW generation capacity from wind energy).In addition, because hydroelectric power forms the main source electricity at present in Ethiopia and will do for years to come, there is big interest to shift from ‘dirty’ energy sources and burgeon clean energy sources like water, solar and wind, among others.
Ethiopia aims to achieve middle-income status by 2025 while developing a green economy. It believes following the conventional development path would, among other adverse effects; result in a sharp increase in GHG emissions and unsustainable use of natural resources. To avoid such negative effects, the government has developed a strategy to build a green economy. It is now starting to transform the strategy into action and welcomes collaboration with domestic and international partners.
Hence, the time-torn and age ravaged notion that poor nations, especially in Africa, cannot help alleviate the world’s environmental challenges is becoming baseless as Ethiopia is proving successful and turning up as essential partner to any institution interested to work on projects that help mitigate the effects of climate change. Hence, the promising expectation is that a country like Ethiopia, endowed with some of the continent’s greatest renewable energy resources, can and will develop a program to secure its own climate security while providing a model for its neighbors to follow.