Addressing Challenges in Long-Term Strategic Energy Planning in LMICs: Learning Pathways in an Energy Planning Ecosystem

Abstract

This paper presents an innovative approach to addressing critical global challenges in long-term energy planning for low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). The paper proposes and tests an international enabling environment, a delivery ecosystem, and a community of practice. These components are integrated into workflows that yield four self-sustaining capacity-development outcomes. Planning long-term energy strategies in LMICs is particularly challenging due to limited national agency and poor international coordination. While outsourcing energy planning to foreign experts may appear to be a viable solution, it can lead to a reduction in government agency (the ability of a government to make its own informed analysis and decisions). Additionally, studies commissioned by external experts may have conflicting terms of reference, and a lack of familiarity with local conditions can result in misrepresentations of on-the-ground realities. It is argued here that enhancing national agency and analytical capacity can improve coordination and lead to more robust planning across line ministries and technical assistance (TA) providers. Moreover, the prevailing consulting model hampers the release and accessibility of underlying analytics, making it difficult to retrieve, reuse, and reconstruct consultant outputs. The absence of interoperability among outputs from various consultants hinders the ability to combine and audit the insights they provide. To overcome these challenges, five strategic principles for energy planning in LMICs have been introduced and developed in collaboration with 21 international and research organizations, including the AfDB, IEA, IRENA, IAEA, UNDP, UNECA, the World Bank, and WRI. These principles prioritize national ownership, coherence and inclusivity, capacity, robustness, transparency and accessibility. In this enabling environment, a unique delivery ecosystem consisting of knowledge products and activities is established. The paper focuses on two key knowledge products as examples of this ecosystem: the open-source energy modeling system (OSeMOSYS) and the power system flexibility tool (IRENA FlexTool). These ecosystem elements are designed to meet user-friendliness, retrievability, reusability, reconstructability, repeatability, interoperability, and audibility (U4RIA) goals. To ensure the sustainability of this ecosystem, OpTIMUS is introduced—a community of practice dedicated to maintaining, supporting, expanding, and nurturing the elements within the ecosystem. Among other ecosystem elements, training and research initiatives are introduced, namely the Energy Modelling Platform for Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean, and Asia-Pacific as well as the ICTP Joint Summer School on Modelling Tools for Sustainable Development. Once deployed via workflows, the preliminary outcomes of these capacity-development learning pathways show promise. Further investigation is necessary to evaluate their long-term impacts, scalability, replication, and deployment costs.

Model for Identification of Electrical Appliance and Determination of Patterns Using High-Resolution Wireless Sensor NETWORK for the Efficient Home Energy Consumption Based on Deep Learning

“…The climate change that the planet is experiencing rapidly has led each country to propose strategies that involve the efficient use of energy resources [8]. Particularly, the Chilean state has established an energy policy for the year 2050, which establishes energy efficiency as one of its pillars [9].…”

clicSAND for OSeMOSYS: a user-friendly interface using open-source optimisation software for energy system modelling analysis.

“…The clicSAND software has been employed in teaching, research analysis, and policy evaluation within a broader energy planning ecosystem [2]. It was initially used and tested with six Imperial College London master's students for thesis projects in Kenya [39], Nigeria [40], Vietnam [41], Laos [42] [43], and Armenia [44].…”

“…As a result of these events, several researchers and government energy ministry analysts utilise clicSAND to build national energy strategies [52]. As explained in [2], the International Energy Agency (IEA) has made it a requirement to finish the OU courses on OSeMOSYS using clicSAND interface as a condition for taking part in its technical assistance program in Africa [53], utilizing two of our capacity-building events, namely EMP-A 23 and ICTP 23. clicSAND is the base of the practical exercises of the OLC Platform online course on Energy and Flexibility Modelling [13] which 444 people have currently completed and in doing so obtained an official certificate and was translated into Spanish. The GitHub supplementary repository is available on Zenodo [12].…”

“…Section 2 of Cannone et al [2]. Initially developed at the Royal Institute of Technology (KTH) in collaboration with various institutions and organisations [3], OSeMOSYS is a long-term bottom-up optimisation model for energy system analysis leading to better investment planning, as demonstrated by its use in various applications [4] [5] [6] and in the newly developed Data-to-Deal (D2D) approach [7].…”

Techno-Economic Data and Assumptions for Open Energy Modelling of Decarbonisation Pathways in the Philippines

“…Effective long-term energy planning hinges on accurate and accessible data to enable robust energy systems modelling. However, national-scale modelling efforts often face significant challenges due to limitations in data quality and accessibility [2]. This study addresses these challenges by offering an openly accessible dataset specifically designed for long-term energy planning in the Philippines.…”