The war in Iran has once again sent global oil prices climbing, disrupting supply routes and putting pressure on economies far beyond the Middle East. For countries like Ethiopia, the implications are immediate: rising import bills, tightening foreign exchange, and increasing inflation.
Energy shocks of this kind are not new. What is different today is not the shock itself, but the context in which it arrives. We are living in a period of overlapping pressures—geopolitical instability, global economic volatility, and environmental degradation—interacting at a speed and scale that existing systems struggle to absorb. For countries already operating at the margins of resilience, this convergence magnifies vulnerability. Familiar shocks produce unfamiliar consequences.
Yet, each episode generates the same concerns, and each time the same response returns. The immediate focus is on the import bill: how much more will fuel cost? How much pressure will this put on foreign exchange reserves? What will it mean for inflation? The response, in turn, is predictable: scramble for dollars, adjust fuel subsidies, and brace for the impact on transport and food prices. These are necessary steps, but they treat the problem as episodic rather than systemic. They focus on the shock, not on the structure it exposes. And for a country like Ethiopia, that structure—the thermal system on which the majority of the population depends—is precisely where the deepest vulnerability lies.
For the majority of Ethiopians, energy is not primarily about the fuel in vehicles or generators. It is about heat: the heat that cooks food, warms homes, bakes injera, roasts coffee, and powers small enterprises. And that heat comes overwhelmingly from biomass—wood, charcoal, crop residues, and dung—used through inefficient, traditional technologies. This is not a peripheral or transitional sector. It is the dominant energy system for daily life and a significant share of economic activity.
In an earlier article, I estimated that Ethiopia’s biomass use in 2023 alone corresponded to the loss of roughly 540,000 hectares of forest linked to fuelwood harvesting—a measure of ecological degradation, not of sustainable woodlot-equivalent supply. At this scale, the issue is not biomass itself, but its widespread use through inefficient and unmanaged technologies. This creates a form of vulnerability that is not captured by conventional energy analysis. Ethiopia is exposed not only to global petroleum price volatility, but also to the condition of its own biomass base. These are not separate domains; they interact in ways that deepen vulnerability under pressure.
From Shock to Deeper Fragility
When oil prices rise, the effects ripple through the economy. Transport becomes more expensive, raising the cost of food and goods. Modern cooking alternatives such as LPG become less affordable, as they are directly linked to global fuel markets. Even where electricity is available, access, affordability and reliability constraints limit its role as a substitute.
Households and small enterprises respond in predictable ways. Faced with rising costs and constrained options, they fall back on what is cheapest and most accessible: biomass. For some, this means abandoning cleaner fuels they had begun to adopt. For others, it means intensifying an already heavy dependence. In practice, even modest increases in the cost of modern fuels have been shown to push households back toward biomass, particularly where income is low and alternatives are limited.
At the level of individual decision-making, this response is entirely rational. Cooking is not optional. Businesses cannot operate without heat. When prices rise, people turn to what they can afford. But what is rational at the micro level becomes destructive at the system level.
As demand for biomass increases—particularly when harvested unsustainably—pressure on forests intensifies. Between 2013 and 2023, fuelwood harvesting contributed to the degradation of an estimated 12.6 million hectares—about 11 percent of Ethiopia’s total land area. Inefficient combustion technologies mean that more fuel is required to produce the same amount of useful heat, compounding the problem and pushing wood harvesting ever farther outward.
As a result, time spent collecting fuel—often by women and children—rises. Each day, an estimated 4.2 million women and girls walk between 10 and 15 kilometers to collect firewood—time that could otherwise be spent in school, in productive work, or in rest. The annual economic cost of this lost labor alone exceeds USD 1 billion. The system absorbs the shock, but in doing so, it degrades the very resource base on which it depends.
The Paradox
This is the paradox at the heart of Ethiopia’s energy crisis. The country’s primary buffer against energy shocks is biomass used through traditional, inefficient technologies. When petroleum becomes expensive or scarce, biomass catches the fall. It provides the heat that keeps households fed and small enterprises operating. It is, in effect, the thermal shock absorber for the entire economy. But this buffer is itself a source of long-term fragility when harvested unsustainably. It is ecologically finite. It is inefficient to use. It imposes heavy labor costs, particularly on women. And because it is harvested largely outside formal systems, it does not generate the revenue or institutional capacity needed to sustain or improve it.
The system absorbs shocks by intensifying the very conditions—unsustainable harvest rates and inefficient use—that make it vulnerable. The result is a system that, in absorbing shocks, costs Ethiopia an estimated USD 4–8 billion annually in combined economic, environmental, and labor burdens—more than the country spends on public health and primary education combined.
This dynamic challenges a common assumption. It is often suggested that reliance on biomass provides insulation from global energy shocks. If petroleum prices rise, at least households can still cook with wood or charcoal. In practice, the opposite is true. Biomass dependence does not insulate Ethiopia from external shocks; it amplifies them by channeling their effects into an already stressed and inefficient system.
Understanding this interaction requires looking beyond the usual metrics of energy policy. National discussions tend to focus on electricity generation, grid expansion, and petroleum supply. These are important. But they do not capture the dynamics of what might be called the country’s thermal system: the set of technologies, fuels, and practices through which heat is produced and used across households, institutions, and small industries.
Thermal Security
Crises of this kind do more than expose weaknesses; they create moments in which structural problems become impossible to ignore. This reveals a deeper problem. Ethiopia’s challenge is not simply one of expanding energy access. It is a problem of thermal security.
Thermal security can be understood as the ability of a country to meet essential cooking, heating, and productive heat needs under conditions of external stress, without being forced into regressive or destructive forms of energy use. It is analogous to food security or water security—a foundational capability that underpins household welfare, economic productivity, and environmental sustainability.
By this standard, Ethiopia’s current system is not secure. It can meet demand under normal conditions, but it does so through mechanisms that become more damaging under pressure. When 6.26 million tons of charcoal are consumed annually—requiring on the order of 62 million tons of wood and contributing to the clearing of roughly 500,000 hectares of forest—thermal security is not an academic concept. It is a question of whether the country’s resource base can sustain its current patterns of heat use. When shocks occur, the system does not adapt in ways that preserve its long-term capacity. It adapts by drawing down its own resource base and reinforcing inefficient patterns of use.
A system that responds to stress by degrading itself is not resilient. If the goal is to strengthen resilience, the question is not simply which fuels or technologies should replace biomass. It is how to reorganize the thermal system so that it can absorb shocks without triggering this downward spiral. This implies a different set of priorities than those that have traditionally guided clean cooking efforts.
First, efficiency must be treated as a strategic objective. The gap between the energy contained in biomass and the useful heat delivered by traditional stoves is enormous. Improving this conversion is one of the fastest ways to reduce pressure on forests, lower household expenditures, and improve resilience.
Second, the system must be diversified. A resilient thermal economy does not rely on a single pathway. It combines multiple options—improved biomass technologies, LPG, electric cooking, and others—so that disruptions in one do not force universal fallback to the least efficient option.
Third, affordability at scale is essential. Technologies that are technically superior but economically inaccessible do not improve system resilience. If households cannot afford to use them consistently, they will revert to traditional fuels at the first sign of stress.
Fourth, substitutability must not mean regression. In a resilient system, households and enterprises can switch between energy options without falling back into more destructive practices.
Fifth, domestic capacity matters. Systems that depend heavily on imported fuels, components, or technologies remain vulnerable to foreign exchange constraints and supply disruptions. Building local manufacturing, maintenance networks, and supply chains increases the system’s ability to adapt under stress. Importantly, the technologies to achieve this are not speculative. Improved biomass stoves developed and manufactured in Ethiopia can cut fuel use by 50–65 percent, reduce emissions by more than 90 percent, and in some cases even generate electricity. What is missing is not the technology but the recognition of thermal systems as infrastructure worthy of sustained investment.
From Social Intervention to Infrastructure
This points to a broader conclusion: clean cooking cannot be treated as a peripheral social or environmental intervention. It is a core component of national resilience.
At present, clean cooking is often framed in terms of household welfare, gender equity, or environmental protection. These are important concerns. But they do not capture the systemic importance of the thermal economy. The World Bank estimates that the combined health, economic, gender, and climate costs of lack of access to clean cooking in Ethiopia amount to roughly USD 72 billion annually. Whether that figure is precise or not, it signals a truth that standard accounting misses: the cost of inaction is not marginal. It is macroeconomic.
When a country’s thermal system fails—when deforestation accelerates, when households spend hours collecting fuel, when small enterprises cannot afford the heat they need to operate—the consequences ripple across the entire economy. Food systems are affected, labor burdens increase, environmental degradation intensifies, and macroeconomic stability is undermined.
For that reason, the thermal system is not a social sector. It is foundational infrastructure. This means planning, financing, and governing thermal systems with the same seriousness applied to electricity and transport, rather than leaving them to fragmented, project-based interventions.
Reclassifying clean cooking as infrastructure shifts the focus from distributing devices to building systems. It emphasizes outcomes—stability of thermal supply, reduced fuel collection time, sustainability of the biomass base—rather than inputs like stove counts. This is more than a conceptual shift. It affects how thermal systems are budgeted, which institutions are responsible for them, and how they are incorporated into national planning frameworks.
Breaking the Loop
Ethiopia is pursuing an ambitious energy transition, particularly through renewable electricity expansion. This is essential. But it is not sufficient. The loop remains: external shocks raise the cost of modern energy; households and firms fall back on biomass; biomass use accelerates degradation; the next shock hits a weaker system.
Breaking this loop requires treating thermal security as a priority equal to electricity expansion. It requires building a system that is efficient, diverse, affordable, and capable of absorbing shocks without consuming its own foundation.
The war in Iran will eventually pass. Oil prices will stabilize. But the significance of this moment lies not in the shock itself, but in what it reveals. It exposes, with unusual clarity, a system that is structured to degrade under pressure.
Thermal energy in Ethiopia is not confined to the household. It underpins food systems, small-scale manufacturing, construction materials, and institutional services—from injera bakeries and coffee roasting to gypsum drying, lime kilns, and grain processing. When the thermal system is fragile, the effects are not limited to household welfare. They extend into productivity, urban food supply, and the functioning of everyday economic life.
The solutions are not experimental. They are not imported. They are already present—locally made, tested in real homes and enterprises, and ready to scale. What is missing is not technology, but recognition.
In a country where more than 90 percent of the population depends on biomass for cooking and heating, thermal transformation is not an optional add-on to the energy transition. It is the foundation of a system that supports both households and the broader economy. Until that is addressed, energy security will remain incomplete—no matter how much electricity is generated, or how many connections are made.
Tsegaye Nega (PhD) is Professor Emeritus at Carleton College (USA) and Founder & CEO of Anega Energies Manufacturing, an Ethiopian clean cookstove enterprise.
Contributed by Tsegaye Nega (PhD)
