Description

Ethiopia placed 19th in Climatescope 2014, with a score of 1.25.

It ranked highest for its clean energy value chain, reflecting the regional significance of its fast growing economy.

Despite plans to develop its wind, geothermal, solar and large hydro resources, the country was awarded mediocre scores for its enabling framework and clean energy investment parameters. This reflects the absence of policies to encourage private investment, its unliberalized power market and, given the size of the national economy, a relatively moderate level of (non-large hydro) investment since 2006.

The country has generating capacity of a little over 2GW, almost all of it large hydro, and there are ambitious plans to expand this. The government’s Growth and Transformation Plan 2010-15 is targeting 10GW of hydro power by 2015, largely through the enormous 6GW Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam Project.

Ethiopia has seen a surge of activity in its energy sector in recent years. It has commissioned more than 1GW of large hydro and 80MW of wind capacity since 2009, and contracted several more such projects. At the end of 2013, the government signed early-stage contracts for 300MW of solar and up to 1GW of geothermal power, the latter with the country’s first independent power producer (IPP).