Long-term Energy-Water-Land System Modeling: A case for Ethiopia

The intention of this work is to provide policy insights for energy, land, and water systems in Ethiopia using the CLEWs model by taking into account the country’s plan to decarbonize the transportation sector by using biofuel and for efficient utilization of marginal land for biofuel development. The study examines three scenarios: Business-As-Usual (BAU-modified), Transport De-Carbonization (TDC-biofuel), and Integrated Energy-Land Efficiency (IE-LE). With the BAU demonstrating a cost-optimal benchmark model, the TDC is aimed to support the Ethiopian government's plan to blend biofuel (bio-ethanol) in the transportation fossil fuel (gasoline)-based sector at a rate of 5%, 10%, 15%, 20%, 30% and 40% in the period 2020-2025, 2026-2030, 2031-2035, 2036-2040, 2041-2045 and 2046-2050 respectively. The IE-LE scenario is associated with the utilization of 3% of the marginal land area identified by the government for the cultivation of biofuel feedstock. The model outputs show that there should be an improvement in the energy mix of the country for sustainable supply and climate mitigation. Moreover, the use of marginal lands is highly recommended than utilization of virgin forestland for biofuel feedstock development; the results show that the marginal land could be sufficient to operationalize blending. Moreover, the government's plan to use sugarcane as biomass for bioethanol production needs to be revised as this feedstock alone is not satisfactory to meet the anticipated biofuel blending demand.