Periodic Reporting for period 1 - EPIC Africa (ENERGY PLANNING AND MODELLING THROUGH INTEGRATED ASSESSMENT OF CLIMATE LAND ENERGY WATER NEXUS IN SUB-SAHARAN AFRICA)
Período documentado: 2022-11-01 hasta 2024-04-30
Countries in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) face significant challenges to achieve sustainable economic development and provide universal access to clean energy, improved water and sanitation, and ensuring food security for their citizens. Achieving these goals will require significant infrastructure expansion in the water-energy-food (WEF) sectors, as well as the sustainable exploitation of natural resources. The efficient exploitation of land, energy and water resources and their synergised use for sustainable economic development, as well as their robustness to stressors from climate change and population growth require integrated optimisation and assessing of strategic plans in these sectors. Improved policy environments and governance structures are also recognised as vital in scaling up funding for climate-resilient investments in WEF infrastructure. The EPIC Africa project addresses these critical needs for integrated infrastructure solutions and policies to tackle resource management challenges exacerbated by climate change and socio-economic factors.
With an overarching goal of developing, validating, and deploying an integrated suite of tools for long-term WEF planning and operational optimization, EPIC Africa assesses least-cost investment strategies across multiple future scenarios, addressing infrastructure needs up to the year 2063. By focusing on the Tana (Kenya) and Volta (Ghana-Burkina Faso) river basins, the project is co-designing infrastructure pathways and policies for the coming decades, informed by stakeholder inputs and contextualized for the specific challenges and opportunities within these basins together with stakeholders and local research networks. Driven by the need to address critical gaps in resource management, policy integration, and sustainable development in SSA, the project also explicitly aligns with broader goals such as the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), Agenda 2063 of the African Union, national development plans and national climate mitigation and adaptation strategies of the basin countries.
1. Designing and developing a long-term WEF optimization model for the basin countries
2. Validating these WEF models for operational functionality and dispatchability by considering future climate and market scenarios, and building WEF models with high spatial and temporal definition
3. Enhancing science-policy interactions through the establishment of Transition Spaces and establishing a research network to co-create and validate modelling tools and outputs
4. Creating and growing a CLEWs Data Observatory to support data-driven decision-making.
With an overarching goal of developing, validating, and deploying an integrated suite of tools for long-term WEF planning and operational optimization, EPIC Africa assesses least-cost investment strategies across multiple future scenarios, addressing infrastructure needs up to the year 2063. By focusing on the Tana (Kenya) and Volta (Ghana-Burkina Faso) river basins, the project is co-designing infrastructure pathways and policies for the coming decades, informed by stakeholder inputs and contextualized for the specific challenges and opportunities within these basins together with stakeholders and local research networks. Driven by the need to address critical gaps in resource management, policy integration, and sustainable development in SSA, the project also explicitly aligns with broader goals such as the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), Agenda 2063 of the African Union, national development plans and national climate mitigation and adaptation strategies of the basin countries.
1. Designing and developing a long-term WEF optimization model for the basin countries
2. Validating these WEF models for operational functionality and dispatchability by considering future climate and market scenarios, and building WEF models with high spatial and temporal definition
3. Enhancing science-policy interactions through the establishment of Transition Spaces and establishing a research network to co-create and validate modelling tools and outputs
4. Creating and growing a CLEWs Data Observatory to support data-driven decision-making.
To meet the first objective of the project, we have combined social sciences approaches for stakeholder engagement and modelling for long-term techno-economic optimization of infrastructures using the CLEWs framework. A first assessment on CLEWs modelling related to the countries represented by the Volta and Tana River basins has been carried out; starting from Ghana, and considering national level sectoral demands and resource availability, a first model has been developed for long-term infrastructure planning in OSeMOSYS. The model for Ghana is under iteration through stakeholder engagement and the Transition Space (TS) interactions which together aid in verifying the modelling decisions geospatial and sectoral levels of aggregation, demand projections, resource constraints and more.
Transition spaces for the Volta and Tana Basins have been established in Ghana and Kenya, respectively. In the respective kick-off workshops, a platform was created for selected 10-15 frontrunners to develop strategies and actions for sustainability transitions in the respective basin countries. The workshops involved training in transition management for participants, as well as problem definitions and envisioning exercises for value-centric development scenarios in the basin countries. The outputs of the TS meetings have resulted in detailed set of problems and scenarios to be further developed by the project, which will then be validated in future interactions of the TS.
Through the EPIC Africa project, a transition governance framework has been developed for agricultural, water, energy and land management policy landscapes for long-term planning and resource management. This approach untangles embedded values and principles in existing policies and their coherence with WEF governance principles.
An EPIC Africa Research Network (EARN) has been established within the basin countries with terms of reference for membership and governance of the network. A kick-off webinar and workshop interactions were organised to solicit the needs from researchers in Ghana, Burkina Faso and Kenya. These needs have led to the establishment of a CLEWs module for the Master’s program in Sustainable Energy Engineering and Management at the University of Energy and Natural Resources (UENR) in Sunyani, Ghana. This module is currently under reaccreditation processes. EARN activities aim at facilitating the co-creation of models and tools by African and EU partners within the network, aiming to create long lasting expertise and enhance local capacity within the basin countries.
The project has also developed a first version of a CLEWs Data Observatory (https://observatory.epicafrica.eu(se abrirá en una nueva ventana)) which is a digital platform containing structured datasets (with interoperability feature) to facilitate WEF nexus based long-term planning as well as simulations of operational scenarios. The development of this platform was preceded by a data audit and collection of data on climate, land, water and energy resources, as well as existing and planned infrastructure in the Tana and Volta basins. The observatory provides i) version management on the generated datasets, with rich meta-data, (ii) endorsement status by stakeholders and mapping of (generated) datasets to specific scenario runs, and (iii) data infrastructure to house the data and its interactive features.
Transition spaces for the Volta and Tana Basins have been established in Ghana and Kenya, respectively. In the respective kick-off workshops, a platform was created for selected 10-15 frontrunners to develop strategies and actions for sustainability transitions in the respective basin countries. The workshops involved training in transition management for participants, as well as problem definitions and envisioning exercises for value-centric development scenarios in the basin countries. The outputs of the TS meetings have resulted in detailed set of problems and scenarios to be further developed by the project, which will then be validated in future interactions of the TS.
Through the EPIC Africa project, a transition governance framework has been developed for agricultural, water, energy and land management policy landscapes for long-term planning and resource management. This approach untangles embedded values and principles in existing policies and their coherence with WEF governance principles.
An EPIC Africa Research Network (EARN) has been established within the basin countries with terms of reference for membership and governance of the network. A kick-off webinar and workshop interactions were organised to solicit the needs from researchers in Ghana, Burkina Faso and Kenya. These needs have led to the establishment of a CLEWs module for the Master’s program in Sustainable Energy Engineering and Management at the University of Energy and Natural Resources (UENR) in Sunyani, Ghana. This module is currently under reaccreditation processes. EARN activities aim at facilitating the co-creation of models and tools by African and EU partners within the network, aiming to create long lasting expertise and enhance local capacity within the basin countries.
The project has also developed a first version of a CLEWs Data Observatory (https://observatory.epicafrica.eu(se abrirá en una nueva ventana)) which is a digital platform containing structured datasets (with interoperability feature) to facilitate WEF nexus based long-term planning as well as simulations of operational scenarios. The development of this platform was preceded by a data audit and collection of data on climate, land, water and energy resources, as well as existing and planned infrastructure in the Tana and Volta basins. The observatory provides i) version management on the generated datasets, with rich meta-data, (ii) endorsement status by stakeholders and mapping of (generated) datasets to specific scenario runs, and (iii) data infrastructure to house the data and its interactive features.