Geothermally Sourced Combined Power and Freshwater Generation for Eastern Africa (Combi-Gen)

Lack of safe and clean water is a long-standing challenges in much of Africa, and especially in Ethiopia and Kenya. Around 50 million people in Ethiopia lack access to safe water, and the country is currently suffering from its worst drought for 50 years, leaving some 18 million people in need of urgent aid. Similarly, only 41% out of the Kenyan population of ~ 47 million have access to safe water.

Despite substantial undeveloped renewable resources, both Ethiopia and Kenya are energy poor. Ethiopia has around 2 GW of electricity generation capacity, meeting only 10% of national electricity demand, and reaching only 12% of the population. Kenya, with an installed electricity capacity around only 2.2 GW, has better grid connectivity, reaching about 55% of its households, but is still plagued by frequent, lengthy outages. In both countries, geothermal energy is vastly under-utilised and represents an exciting opportunity of addressing energy challenges, alleviating poverty, and promoting economic development.

The Combi-Gen project aims to develop a novel geothermally sourced-combined power and freshwater generation technology, which promises to initiate a genuinely innovative shift in the engineering response to the twin challenges of energy shortage and water-scarcity in Ethiopia and Kenya. The research will provide a novel technology that can significantly improve the utilisation of the precious geothermal resources in Ethiopia and Kenya, and can produce both power and freshwater simultaneous to address the long-standing twin challenge of water and energy shortage in both countries and others of this kind. Once the developed Combi-Gen system is widely installed, it will contribute to sustainable development through reliable renewable energy and freshwater generation, and a reduction in poverty through promoting economic development and employment growth.

Combi-Gen tackles a number of key priorities for development identified by the GRCF that relate to challenges of health, clean energy, safe water, sustainable agriculture, and foundations for inclusive growth. The core of the project is to tackle challenges associated with 'Sustainable infrastructure development'. The geothermal focus is strategically aligned with the government energy policy priorities on developing renewable and sustainable energy to meet power demand in both countries.

There will be a wide range of potential direct and indirect beneficiaries of the developed Combi-Gen technology.

1. The immediate beneficiaries of the developed technology will be local communities resident in the vicinity of geothermal resources - in the first instance in the Rift Valley. Once Combi-Gen systems are widely installed, they will provide both electricity and freshwater. While electricity can also be distributed via the grid, water can only be deployed economically to benefit local communities. The access to electricity will allow them to use mobile phone, televisions, and radios, and other appliances, improving people's life quality in these regions. This can also provide them with more opportunities of education and access to knowledge. The production of freshwater will not only provide safe and clean drinking water to local communities, but also boost local agriculture / horticulture, principally to enhance food security (and marketable crops).

2. The developed Combi-Gen technology, via its novel integration with a thermal chimney-driven, air-cooled condenser to condense the flashing vapour to produce fresh water, promises to significantly improve the economics of geothermal power production. Hence it can be anticipated that, once Combi-Gen technology is deployed, the exploitation of geothermal energy will be accelerated in Ethiopia, Kenya, and ultimately more widely in East Africa and beyond. The resultant increase of geothermal power generation will make a significant contribution to the national grid power supplies in both countries, offering low-carbon baseload electricity, benefitting populations within reach of the grid.

3. The manufacturers of power generation equipment in these countries and the UK will be the direct beneficiaries of the developed Combi-Gen technology. Intellectual property generated from this project will be patented nationally and internationally. We plan to form a wide network including stakeholders such as academia, industrialists, consultants, and investors to further develop and commercialise this novel technology in these countries and the UK. We anticipate hundreds to, ultimately, thousands of new jobs being generated for the manufacturing, installation, and maintenance of our products, significantly contributing to economic growth in these countries and the UK.

4. Policy makers in Ethiopia and Kenya will have early access to a potentially game-changing technology to tackle shortages of both energy and water supplies.

5. This project will make an important g contribution to build the geothermal energy exploitation related research capacity in Ethiopia and Kenya. Dr Elias Lewi Teklemariam who is an Assistant Professor in the Institute of Geophysics, Space Science and Astronomy (IGSSA) at Addis Ababa University (AAU), Ethiopia, is the Co-Investigator of our consortium. The project will aim to help develop geothermal related research programme in Ethiopia. The proposed work entails training for both AAU researchers and local community members for social science applications, data-gathering, and economic analyses.

6. We will train a number of high quality researchers through this project in both Ethiopia and the UK. Five PDRAs of diverse expertise will carry out the proposed research work. A large number of MEng and BEng project students will be trained along the implementation of this exciting project.