Capturing emissions in least-cost electrification planning
The World Bank/ESMAPs Global Electrification Platform (GEP) is an online, interactive platform allowing users to examine scenarios towards universal access to electricity by 2030 for 58 countries worldwide. In this project, KTH worked to improve the GEP-OnSSET model on the GEP, to also account for greenhouse gas emissions related to increased access to electricity. Additionally, the effect of a carbon tax on the costs related to increased electricity access was added as an additional lever on the platform.
Background
Meeting sustainable development target 7.1 on ensuring universal access to affordable, reliable and modern energy services, is fundamental for improving the livelihoods of people. Nonetheless, around 750 million people still lack electricity access today. To breach this gap, the Global Electrification Platform (GEP) has developed pathways to achieve universal electricity access across selected countries. To date, GEP has presented its pathways in the form of investment scenarios composed of different combinations of "levers" as costing parameters, demand targets and uses, and technical constraints of the system.
However, as socio-economic development historically has been coupled with increasing emissions of greenhouse gases (GHG), expanding access to electricity services may increase the reliance on fossil fuels for power generation (depending on the fuel-technology mixes), causing an increase in carbon emissions to the atmosphere. Therefore, there is a need to account for emissions when developing electrification pathways. This is especially important now, as global climate agreements advance, and considerable climate finance flows can be leveraged for advancing low-carbon energy access efforts.
Aim and objectives
The objective of this project is to include the accounting of GHG emissions for the scenarios in the GEP, and the possibility to include carbon costs (or financing) as a new lever for least-cost scenarios for the GEP. The inclusion of carbon emissions estimations will be added to the Open Source Spatial Electrification Tool (OnSSET) and the GEP-OnSSET model.
Project partners
Funding is provided by the World Bank/ESMAP.
Timeframe: 2022
Researchers
For further information about this project, please contact Camilo Ramirez
