Periodic Reporting for period 2 - EPIC Africa (ENERGY PLANNING AND MODELLING THROUGH INTEGRATED ASSESSMENT OF CLIMATE LAND ENERGY WATER NEXUS IN SUB-SAHARAN AFRICA)
Période du rapport: 2024-05-01 au 2025-04-30
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 assessment 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.
EPIC Africa aims to tackle these challenges by
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.
EPIC Africa aims to tackle these challenges by
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.
The project has developed long-term WEF optimisation models for the basin countries, leveraging the CLEWs (Climate, Land, Energy, Water systems) framework. For Ghana, a first model has been successfully developed for long-term infrastructure planning using OSeMOSYS, and it is undergoing continuous refinement through stakeholder engagement and Transition Space (TS) interactions, which help verify modelling decisions, geospatial and sectoral aggregation levels, and demand projections. Similarly, Country CLEWs analyses for Kenya and Burkina Faso are actively under development. The project's WEF tool integrates OSeMOSYS and OnSSET, comprising three parts: OSGEM for geospatially explicit electrification pathways, a River Basin CLEWs Model for detailed agricultural activities with spatially specific data, and a Country CLEWs Model for national energy system integration with water and land use.
Furthermore, significant progress has been made in validating long-term WEF models for operational functionality and dispatchability. This involves the development and application of spatially explicit approaches and operational/dispatch models for WEF infrastructure systems. Key advancements include the implementation of a spatially explicit Pumped Hydro Energy Storage (PHES) assessment methodology and its application in Kenya, which considers basin-level water and land demands for storage and identifies strategic closed-loop PHES locations that maximise system flexibility while minimising the levelized cost of storage and explicitly accounting for land use under various climate scenarios, incorporating hourly unit commitment and seasonal variations. The project has also developed an innovative approach linking urban development patterns with electrification pathways using machine learning for spatial electricity demand forecasting in Kenya.
Transition Spaces (TS) have been established in Ghana and Kenya, providing platforms for key stakeholders to co-create strategies and actions for sustainability transitions. A transition governance framework has been developed for the agricultural, water, energy, and land management policy landscapes, aiming to clarify the embedded values and principles in existing policies and their coherence with the WEF governance principles. The EPIC Africa Research Network (EARN) has been established within the basin countries, facilitating co-creation of models and tools by African and EU partners to build lasting expertise and enhance local capacity in the partner institutions and more broadly in the partner countries and Africa.
Furthermore, significant progress has been made in validating long-term WEF models for operational functionality and dispatchability. This involves the development and application of spatially explicit approaches and operational/dispatch models for WEF infrastructure systems. Key advancements include the implementation of a spatially explicit Pumped Hydro Energy Storage (PHES) assessment methodology and its application in Kenya, which considers basin-level water and land demands for storage and identifies strategic closed-loop PHES locations that maximise system flexibility while minimising the levelized cost of storage and explicitly accounting for land use under various climate scenarios, incorporating hourly unit commitment and seasonal variations. The project has also developed an innovative approach linking urban development patterns with electrification pathways using machine learning for spatial electricity demand forecasting in Kenya.
Transition Spaces (TS) have been established in Ghana and Kenya, providing platforms for key stakeholders to co-create strategies and actions for sustainability transitions. A transition governance framework has been developed for the agricultural, water, energy, and land management policy landscapes, aiming to clarify the embedded values and principles in existing policies and their coherence with the WEF governance principles. The EPIC Africa Research Network (EARN) has been established within the basin countries, facilitating co-creation of models and tools by African and EU partners to build lasting expertise and enhance local capacity in the partner institutions and more broadly in the partner countries and Africa.