Realizing electrification via green development
G/Michael Asgedom
Various international chroniclers including UN environment website stated that the first of its kind dry waste treatment and energy development plant is being finalized in Reppie locality of Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. They said Ethiopia is marching towards Africa’s first waste-to-energy plant. They said the nation will begin running the plant in nearly 2018. The plant, known as Reppie Project is built on the Qoshe landfill site located in the outskirts of Addis Ababa.
The plant is expected to treat 1,400 tons of waste on a daily basis, which amounts to 80 percent of the refuse generated by the capital. The plant is expected to supply 30 percent of the households in the City with electricity in a manner that comes on par with global standards.
The project has been realized in collaboration with the auspices of international companies; Cambridge Industries Limited (Singapore), China National Electric Engineering and Rambolli, Danish engineering firm. The Consortium has been established to design, construct and run waste energy facilities customized to the needs of Ethiopia.
The Reppie project is just a piece of the broader endeavor of Ethiopia to alleviate pollution and embrace renewable energy across all sectors of the economy. The project is anticipated to become a beacon of green development for other countries in Africa and around the world.
The waste to energy incineration plant burn the huge dump of rubbish in a combustion chamber and the heated generated in the process is employed to boil water until it turns in to steam, which in turn drives a turbine generator that produces electricity. This system of energy generation has been earlier applied in Europe, particularly in countries that had limited area of land (for instance, France has 126 waste-to-energy plants while Germany and Italy have 99 and 40 such plants, respectively).
This style of energy generation is known for its benefits viewed from quadruple angles; saving land space, generating electricity, preventing the discharge of pollutants in to ground water and cut the release of Methane; it is a potential green house gas generated in landfills and blows into the atmosphere.
In addition, in a bid to diversify its energy sources and curb its dependence on hydro power, which may fluctuate during dry seasons, nation has started undertaking energy development activities. Accordingly, it had concluded an agreement with Enel Green Power Company to develop 100 MW solar power plants in Metehara town.
Currently, nation derives 90 percent of its electric power from hydro power plants and the construction of many solar projects is expected to decrease the country’s dependence on one energy source as its main supplier.
Experts had said that even though Ethiopia’s contribution to the problem of climate change is negligible, it had in 2011 taken an exemplary decision to build a climate-resilient green and middle-income economy by 2025. The ambition is said to require more than 200 billion U.S. dollars over a period of 15 years.
Despite the challenges related to finance and technological knowhow, Ethiopia is striving a lot to capitalize on its electrification and power generation capacity from water, wind, solar, geothermal and other renewable sources. Particularly, nation is committed to diversify its renewable energy sources as much as it could; develop carbon-neutral economy and become more resilient to the impacts of climate change.
Ethiopia’s effervescence related to renewable energy development has not faded away even after a decade of rapid growth. Needless to say, Ethiopia is the foremost signatory to the Paris Agreement on climate change, committed to axe carbon emissions by 64 percent by 2030. Taking this very fact in to account, the government has earmarked billions of dollars into hydropower megaprojects such as the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD) and other wind farm projects.
For instance, nation has envisioned becoming the wind power capital of Africa. The country had commenced its run to generate clean energy when it inaugurated one of the continent’s largest Ashedoga wind farms in 2013, at the cost of 290 million USD. This was followed by the even larger 153 MW Adama II facility in 2015. But wind accounted for just 324 MW of Ethiopia’s total output of 4,180 MW, with the vast majority coming from hydropower.
Ethiopia is mountainous and blessed with desirable nature to harvest wind power. Its mountainous topography can help build coveted wind power capacity. It is one of the most promising countries in the continent from the perspective of generating tremendous amount of power from renewable sources.
Amazingly, it is nearly completing construction of waste treatment plant. The treatment is expected to contribute its own to alleviate the burden of pollution, parallel to generating huge amount of energy that may join the main grid to satisfy the power need of Addis Ababans.
This indeed has proved that the country is the quintessence of green development, fervent supporter of building green economy while contributing its own share to the reduction of impacts of climate change; utilizing renewable energy sources and propelling the economy with clean and renewable energy sources.
Renewable power production has been set to see dramatic change in the second Growth and Transformation Plan (GTP-II) that will see total output pass 17,000 MW by 2020. The government has planned to develop as much renewable energy as possible (for example, delivering up to 5,200 MW from wind power within four years).
Ethiopia has been aware of impacts of environmental damage and degradation since long. It is one of the vanguard countries that have been adopting national climate resilience strategies with a view to applying green development integrated with crosscutting issues. Nowadays, nation is increasingly setting an example on how to combat climate change, parallel to achieving economic growth (this effort has enabled the country to become well known by the international community as one of the ardent advocates of green development).
Nation has taken in to account the very fact that reducing the effects of climate change is aggravated by numerous problems including financial and technological constraints, lack of political will of countries and bureaucracy to budget resources. Cognizant of this hurdle, Ethiopia has been diligently striving to employ cost-effective methods and harness its abundant renewable resources to generate clean energy.
Ethiopia understands the very fact that it is essential to diversify its sources of power and multiply the amount of production many folds; eyed at sustaining the current voracious need to electricity that is growing by over 25 percent per annum. To this end, the nation has been conducting feasibility studies thoroughly to help identify its full potential of renewable power generation and assess the amount and type of power plant it can construct throughout the country.
According to International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED), the country’s Climate Resilient Green Economy Strategy (CRGE) was commenced in 2011 with the initiation of the government. It was initially spearheaded by the late Prime Minister Meles Zenawi that enabled the CRGE to be backed by strong political leverage. The Strategy has been taken as an opportunity to transform the country’s fast-track development and help it leapfrog to modern and energy-efficient development.
The aforementioned Institute witnessed that Ethiopia has devised workable strategy for the realization of CRGE. The nation is interested to enhance its fruitfulness through committed leadership, formulation of outstanding plan and enhancement of implementation capacity. In this regard, CRGE is being coordinated and overseen by the CRGE Ministerial Steering Committee (an initiative under the Prime Minister’s Office), the Environmental Protection Agency and the Ministry of Finance and Economic Development.
By and large, Ethiopia not only formulated CRGE road map, but also its Climate Resilient Green Economic Strategy demonstrates greater commitment to outpace the conventional approach of green economy development. The Strategy assumes that conventional development path may result in escalation of carbon emissions and rapid depletion of natural resources.
In relation to green development, GTP-II focuses on expanding renewable energy sources which are clean and carbon-free. The expansion includes generation of water, wind, geothermal and solar energy to fulfill the power demand of the country. Focus is also being given to generating adequate power to support rapid economic and social transformation of the country.
Ethiopia will leave no stone unturned to realize its power generation capacity targeted in the GTP-II. To this end, numerous projects are in the pipeline, which would enable Ethiopia to satisfy its demand of renewable power and accelerate its development; as far as making it the powerhouse of Africa, besides satisfying its growing demand of energy.
Overall, development endeavor of the country will continue being harmonized with nation’s ambition to achieve middle income status after fifteen years. Currently, the government is spurring the country to achieve its mission of development in a carbon neutral way. And nation believes that electrification of the economy and ensuing extrication of poverty could be realized through green development.