Potential Climate Change Risks to Meeting Zimbabwe’s NDC Goals and How to Become Resilient

Abstract

Almost all countries have committed to develop Nationally Determined Contributions (NDC) to reduce GHG emissions. They determine the level of GHG mitigation that, as a nation, they will commit to reducing. Zimbabwe has ambitious and laudable GHG mitigation targets. Compared to a coal-based future, emissions will be reduced by 33% per capita by 2030. If historical climate conditions continue, it can do this at low or negative cost if suitable sources of climate financing are in place. The NDC plots a positive future. However, much of Zimbabwe’s NDC mitigation center on hydropower generation and other measures that are dangerously vulnerable to climate change. Should the climate change in accordance with recent projections, these investments will be at risk, severely constraining electricity supply and causing high degrees of economic damage. This paper uses the Open-Source energy Modelling SYStem (OSeMOSYS) to consider two adaptation pathways that address this vulnerability. In the first, the country turns to a historically accessible option, namely the deployment of coal. In so doing, the electrical system is made more resilient, but emissions ramp up. The second pathway ‘climate proofs’ the power sector by boosting solar and wind capacity, using hydropower to provide balance for these new renewable resources, and introducing significant energy efficiency measures. This second pathway would require a set of extra accompanying investments and changes to the power market rules, but allows for both system resilience and NDC targets to be met. The paper shows that Zimbabwe’s low emissions growth can be made resilient, and while this path promises strong benefits, it also requires strong commitment and political will. From this paper insights are drawn and requirements for future analysis are made. Two critical insights are that: (i) NDCs that focus on mitigation should include resilience in their design. If they do not, they can introduce deep vulnerability; (ii) a departure from historical electricity market structures appears to hold potential for strong environmental, cost and reliability gains.

A Systematic Review on Investment Risks in Hydropower to Developing Sustainable Renewable Energy Systems

“…Risks related to human capital development One of the significant impacts assessed in the review is the impact of climate change on the hydro energy sector's ability to generate revenue. The studies by (de Queiroz et al, 2019;Howells et al, 2021;Lucas and Mendes-Da-Silva, 2018;Ray et al, 2018) have highlighted the risk climate change will have on the hydroenergy sector's ability to generate revenue. These studies show that guaranteed energy is commonly reduced by climate change, which harms revenue generation.…”

“…This study is a Systematic Review of Investment risks in hydropower, where 34 full-text studies were conducted to develop (Abadie et al, 2020;Fernandes et al, 2019;Hamilton et al, 2020;Wessel et al, 2020) Literature review (Akcay, 2021;Dash and Singh, 2020;Denaro et al, 2018;Shaktawat and Vadhera, 2021;Wyrwoll and Grafton, 2021) Fuzzy-Logic (Dincer and Yuksel, 2019;Hashemizadeh et al, 2021;Karatop et al, 2021;Roy and Roy, 2020;Wu et al, 2020;Yu et (Dincer and Yuksel, 2019) Colar by Difference (CBD) (Fernandes et al, 2019) Multiobjective evolutionary algorithms (MOEA) (Gupta et al, 2020;Hamilton et al, 2020) The open source energy MOdelling SYStem (OSeMOSYS) (Howells et al, 2021) Risk-averse planning (Inzunza et al, 2021) Cost-benefit approach (Udayakumara and Gunawardena, 2018)…”

The Role of Low-Emission Hydrogen in Developing Countries: A Techno-Economic Assessment of Hydrogen Pathways in Colombia

“…OSeMOSYS is widely recognized as an accessible, straightforward, and quick-learning tool with many capacitybuilding resources and communities of practice [112]. Different studies have implemented OSeMOSYS to evaluate the sustainable expansion of national power systems [113][114][115][116][117][118][119][120][121][122][123][124] or the combination of power and transport sectors [119]. In addition, a recent work explored energy planning in the power sector to integrate electrolytic hydrogen dedicated to exports in Chile [125].…”

Informing Sustainable Energy Policy in Developing Countries: An Assessment of Decarbonization Pathways in Colombia Using Open Energy System Optimization Modelling

“…OSeMOSYS is designed to be fully accessible, straightforward, and transparent for supporting long-term energy modelling in academia, industry, and governments [13,[33][34][35]. The framework has widely been used to support local [36][37][38], national [9,[39][40][41][42][43][44][45][46][47][48][49], and regional [50][51][52] energy system assessments.…”