Solar Fuels

One of the central challenges of the energy transition is to bring the supply of renewable energies into line with the demand. Power-to-X, short P2X, makes exactly this possible by producing storable and transportable fuels from renewable electricity. When photovoltaic energy is used as a source of electricity, it is commonly referred to as solar fuel. In Ethiopia, solar fuels could soon become competitive thanks to particularly favorable framework conditions and thus make a decisive contribution to combating widespread energy poverty.

Today, biomass is the only affordable and available energy source for most of the population. The consequences of this are numerous and dramatic:

• Despite intensive reforestation efforts, the forest area is constantly decreasing. This results in CO2 emissions and the loss of the ecosystem.
• Fertile soil is lost due to erosion damage.
• Droughts are increasing due to the soil and vegetation’s lack of water storage capacity.
• There are health consequences (respiratory diseases, stillbirths) and economic consequences (increased effort to collect firewood) for the affected population, especially the women who are traditionally responsible for cooking.

The Ethiopian state wants to contribute to the Paris Climate Agreement and reduce its greenhouse gas emissions by about two-thirds by 2030. To achieve this, the overexploitation of biomass resources – among Ethiopia’s largest sources of greenhouse gas emissions – must be stopped and reversed. But this is only possible if the population has access to alternative, clean energy sources. Solar fuels can make a decisive contribution here and relieve the notoriously overstretched electricity grid, which is being rapidly expanded and to which only about half of the population is connected today.