Energy Landscape Household Questionnaire and Data, 2020-2025

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Ethiopia faces a critical challenge in delivering affordable, reliable, and sustainable energy to its predominantly rural population. While renewable energy offers a promising solution to reduce carbon emissions and improve energy access, progress has been slow due to structural, social, and infrastructural barriers. More than 80% of Ethiopians live in rural areas where national grid expansion is economically and logistically unfeasible, underscoring the need for decentralized, off-grid alternatives. Community energy systems, off-grid projects in which local communities actively participate in the development and management of energy infrastructure, represent a promising but underutilized pathway to bridging Ethiopia’s energy access gap. Despite their potential to promote local ownership, resilience, and social inclusion, these systems remain poorly developed and understood in the Ethiopian context. This study aims to explore the opportunities and barriers associated with community energy systems in Ethiopia and their potential role in advancing energy transitions. Using an experimental and interpretive lens, the research draws on a comparative analysis of three in- depth, multi-method qualitative case studies. It investigates how community energy projects are initiated, managed, and experienced in practice. Findings reveal that community involvement is central to the sustainability of these systems, with communities often assuming full operational responsibilities post-commissioning. However, projects face persistent challenges related to accessing capital, managing fragmented supply chains, and building local capacity: particularly around governance, technical maintenance, and understanding viable business models. The study highlights the need for enabling policy frameworks and capacity-building interventions to unlock the full potential of community energy in Ethiopia’s clean energy transition. Data collection method This study explores three community energy projects in Ethiopia: The Gira Tsatse solar mini-grid in Tigray, the Bura micro-hydro plant, and the Mesino Tebita solar irrigation system. Serving 65 to 300 households each, the projects were initially supported by regional governments, GIZ, and Bahir Dar University, with ownership later transferred to the communities. They vary in application, from basic electricity needs like lighting and charging to productive uses such as milling, irrigation, and small businesses, reflecting diverse local contexts and energy needs. Primary data was gathered from 151 households (26.7% of 565 total beneficiaries) through structured surveys, with attention to gender and cultural diversity. Local multilingual data collectors conducted and translated the interviews. Purposive sampling was used to ensure geographic and cultural representation. Additionally, six experts and local administrators provided insights through interviews and written responses, conducted in Tigrigna, Amharic, and English. This mixed-method, multilingual approach yielded a comprehensive understanding of community energy systems, benefits, sustainability, and implementation challenges.

The 2019 Energy Progress Report shows the need to step up efforts to link on-grid and off-grid strategies to facilitate access to electricity (EIA et al, 2019). According to the report, eight of the twenty countries with the largest deficits in access to electricity are in East Africa, including Ethiopia, Malawi, and Mozambique. In countries facing such significant gaps in energy access, the rapid adoption of renewable energy may help to deliver access to energy sustainably. The growing availability of renewable technologies in East Africa's countries suggests that such a transition is possible. However, technology alone will not solve the challenge of energy access. A transition to sustainable energy needs to prioritise the social needs of excluded and disadvantaged groups. Responding to people's energy needs requires institutional, organisational, and financial models of energy delivery that prioritise social benefits over profits. New models of energy delivery have been developed to involve communities in the design and management of off-grid systems. While the size and technologies used vary, all Community Energy Systems (henceforth CESs) incorporate the perspectives of beneficiaries on electricity generation and distribution through collaborative mechanisms for decision-making. CESs can provide additional capacity to existing grids, provide off-grid services where the grid is absent, and bridge on-grid and off-grid systems. The project CESET brings together researchers from political science, human geography, engineering and technology providers to understand the role of CESs in advancing a just sustainable energy transition that will bridge the energy access gap in East Africa. Our focus is in Ethiopia, Malawi, and Mozambique, three countries where there is considerable local enthusiasm about CESs. Proponents of CESs argue that they can foster deep structural transformations in countries facing large electricity deficits. First, by giving ownership to communities, CESs challenge the political economy of energy and reveal energy-related inequalities. Second, by demonstrating new modes of service provision, CESs can diversify the institutional landscape of energy delivery. Third, by incorporating the concerns of the more disadvantaged populations in the design and management of energy services, CESs can respond to their needs directly and generate innovations tailored to those needs. There is little evidence of how CESs work in practice and their impacts in East Africa because of the shortage of data on CESs, and energy systems more generally. There is a need to renew policy and practice. Research and interventions often rely on technological blueprints that do not fit the institutional and material conditions in which CESs operate. Moreover, conceptualisations of communities as harmonious, homogenous units obscure the multiple forms of exclusion that influence energy access and infrastructure management. There is already an international consensus about the need for disaggregated data to understand the gender gap in energy access. CESET advocates going beyond by considering the intersection of gender with multiple social characteristics that may also lead to exclusion from energy services (such as age, sexual orientation, ethnicity, place of origin). CESET will produce three outcomes to address this challenge. CESET's theoretical framework will recognise the variety of CESs models and how they interact with multiple variables of community diversity. CESET will also characterise the landscape of operation of CESs in East Africa at 3 scales: local, national, and regional. Further learning will happen with the activation of a Community Energy Lab in Mozambique to compile evidence of what works in practice. CESET's efforts will lead to the creation of a Regional Energy Learning Alliance to deliver a long-term research programme and support trans-sectorial learning on CESs in East Africa.