EPIC Africa CLEWs assessment supporting Burkina Faso’s development plans

Background

Renewable energy is abundant in the African continent, yet the fulfillment of the targets related to UN SDG 7 “affordable, reliable, sustainable and modern energy for all” is a real challenge to many countries that try to ensure security of energy, food, and clean water at the same time as mitigating CO₂ emissions, and adapting to climate change. The EPIC Africa project aims to support a sustainable transition with new knowledge on the efficient exploitation of land, energy and water resources and their synergised use for sustainable economic development. This is done by way of open-source modelling tools for integrated assessment, where the model output is used to formulate insights to aid planning and decisions. Participating African countries are Burkina Faso, Ghana, and Kenya.

Burkina Faso is a country, with low access to electricity (just below 20% in 2022, but only 3% in rural areas). While targets for improving access to electricity and clean cooking solutions are in place, a transition must be carefully planned since the investments needed are high (no-regret decisions desirable) and land and water resources are vulnerable to climate change. These limited resources are also used for the agricultural sector, and community values.

Task description

Your work shall build on best practices for CLEWs analysis, which means that a state-of-the-art assessment must be carried out in the beginning. It must also link clearly to the EPIC Africa project  – as a thesis student you will join the team. This means that we expect you to follow the EPIC Africa practices of communicating (presenting to the consortium, and 1-2 blogs,) are expected.

Using OSeMOSYS, you will build, validate and document a CLEWs model of Burkina Faso for assessing long term transition until 2063. You will collect country relevant information and discuss it with stakeholders to form a relevant and transparent set for model input. To validate the model, you will run a model base case, informed by the BF NDC, agriculture, and water management plans. You will also carry out a sensitivity analysis to show case most important parameters that affect the output.

Learning outcomes

Upon completion of the thesis work, you will be able to:

• Describe and discuss the state-of-the –art related to CLEWs analysis for supporting sustainable development.

• Construct an integrated assessment model, using the CLEWs framework aided by the OSeMOSYS tool. This also includes:

  • To collecting, select, and document model input data.

• Document the model, the work flow, data, and more, according to the FAIR principles and open science practices .

• Describe and discuss the model output in relation to project relevant information on the Burkina Faso context.

Prerequisites

Completed courses MJ2381  or MJ2380 .

English is the consortium language, thus it is required that you are able to fully communicate in English.

In addition for this thesis, a good knowledge in French is seen as an advantage since this would facilitate the interaction with Burkina Faso contacts.

Specialization track

Transformation of Energy System (TES)

Division/Department

Division of Energy Systems  – Department of Energy Technology

Duration

January 2025 through June 2025 (Dept of Energy Technology MSc thesis presentation days scheduled for mid June), 20 weeks.

How to apply

We are looking forward to your expression of interest, along with a short CV to the examiner Viktoria Martin. Include a short statement as to what makes you interested in the project, and in particular your interest for communicating in writing, and in person, as part of interacting with a wider scientific community.

Supervision

Examiner