ENERGY SYSTEM MODELLING FOR GREEN DEVELOPMENT OF AFRICA

1. CONTEXT / BACKGROUND

Sustainable and “green” energy will play a pivotal and central role in Africa’s future development. Indeed, the Joint Communication for a Comprehensive Strategy with Africa adopted on 9/3/2020 highlights the key role of innovation to enable African countries towards sustainable pathways of low-carbon, climate resilient and green growth trajectory, leapfrogging fossil fuel technologies. The R&I Partnership on Climate Change and Sustainable Energy of the EU-AU High-Level Policy Dialogue on Science, Technology and Innovation, is expected to strongly contribute to Action 1 of the Comprehensive Strategy with Africa, leveraging its impressive renewable energy (RE) potential. This continent has one of the youngest and fastest-growing populations in the world. 90% more people have lived in cities over the past 20 years, and this trend is expected to continue through 20402 . These significant demographic shifts make Africa a major contributor to the rise in global energy consumption. They will also result in a sharp rise in the need for building materials and minerals, an increase in industrial and agricultural production, and more mobility of people and products. However, it is still difficult to access affordable and sustainable energy.

Furthermore, more than 1 billion people in sub-Saharan Africa will live in locations that require space cooling as a result of the increasingly severe living conditions brought on by climate change (such as increased temperatures and humidity, more frequent extreme events, etc.). African countries must double their energy production by 2040 in order to meet the demands of their expanding urban populations and economies, while also ensuring that 600 million people have access to electric energy2 . A wide variety of resources, including hydrocarbons and Renewable Energy Sources (RES), are used to generate energy in Africa. In 2019, the continent’s installed capacity—which includes RES and other sources—totaled 232 GW. However, only 22% of total capacity is dependent on RES (despite the enormous resource potential) , principally hydropower (35.7 GW), followed by solar (7.2 GW) or wind (5.7 GW)3 . With the aid of digital technology and payment methods, initiatives to provide rural populations with modern, reinforced energy services as well as new opportunities for profitable employment are anchored by mini-grids, micro-grids, and solar household systems.

The EMERGE partnership realises that access to sustainable energy for a majority of citizens in Africa must be integrated with the development of appropriate industrial and economic capacities and the creation of qualified jobs. This is clearly stated by the Africa-Europe Alliance, whose principles underpin the EU-AU R&I Partnership on Climate Change and Sustainable Energy, and specifically the aim to develop energy models fitting unique African economic and social contexts for supporting the policy making. To address these needs, the EMERGE project will bring innovative solutions, knowledge transfer and capacity building approaches into the multi-faceted context of Africa through an open innovation methodology and developmental pathways focusing on practical problems and solutions, taking into account the economic, environmental, social and health benefits across African communities, and targeting the establishment of local business, employment opportunities. Key to improving quality of life and sustainability of solutions is the decarbonisation of the energy and energy-related systems, where strategic capacity building actions around renewable energy may be achieved through education and leveraging of local supply chains, appropriate business models for replication and upscaling, and the engagement of civil society organizations and investors. In particular the energy system decarbonisation has to be observed in the context of WEF Nexus (Water-Energy-Food) which is why EMERGE will work closely with WEF initiatives on networking, knowledge sharing and synergy creating.

2. MAIN ACTIVITIES & IMPLEMENTATION APPROACH

The main work packages are:

• WP1: Knowledge Base; first version of the citizen and expert engagement methodology; use cases and policy barriers and requirements(opportunities)
• WP2: Development of Common System Architecture and implementation of Knowledge Base in database
• WP3: Tools to support and accelerate the clean energy transition of African countries
• WP4: Methodology for citizen and expert engagement & value-based proposition design of energy system models, participatory and policy labs, user experience, policy and market steering recommendations
• WP5: Coordinating the multiple pilot sites, implementing the EMERGE Toolbox solutions in the pilots and gathering feedback.
• WP6: Maximizing the impact creation through communication, dissemination, replication and exploitation activities, and coordination with other activities and projects especially HLPD CCSE Partnership and projects awarded under the HORIZON-CL5-2021-D3-03-01
• WP7: Project coordination and management
  The table below give the Gantt chart of the implementation schedule of the main activities.

While ECREEE will be participating through its in-kind contributions to most the activities, it will the implementation of task T2.1 and task T5.4.

3. ACHIEVED OUTPUTS (If the project is ongoing)

The kick-off Meeting was conducted on Wednesday December 13, 2023