An approach to increase the effectiveness of use of modelling tools to inform climate-compatible development strategies in Low and Middle Income Countries

Background

In the past two decades, the use of mathematical modelling tools to support decision making at government level on energy systems planning, resource use planning and climate change mitigation and adaptation has ramped up significantly. Integrated Assessment Modelling (IAM) is a modelling practice aiming at representing globally the links between global climate, planning of sectors of the economy and related emissions, socio-economic benefits and trade-offs of such planning. Integrated Assessment Models (IAMs) have been long used and refined to inform the IPCC Assessment Reports on climatic change and the Paris Agreement and COP discussions.

While IAMs have typically global scale, they often have regional and national resolution, with inclusion of policy, techno-economic and physical constraints in different nations. However, many scholars argue that they still often capture poorly the real challenges that climate-compatible policy making faces in each country and thereby capture poorly the potential solutions. Therefore, they end up being useful as a framework to guide global climate action (and show end results or end goals), but not as much useful as a framework to guide national policy making and investment.

Objectives

This thesis should detail:

• Who needs what type of information, to accelerate policy making and investment in climate-compatible development in LMICs;
• Where IAMs may fit in the policy cycle and investment decisions;
• What types of modelling tools can provide information that accelerates policy making and investment towards solutions that are acceptable and sustainable locally.

The thesis is therefore qualitative in nature.

Task description

The work will focus on specific cases, to aid the literature review and the proposal of concrete solutions. The specific cases include one or more of the following countries: Sri Lanka, Kenya, Ethiopia. The supervisors are working with analysts from all these countries as part of a EU-funded project on Integrated Assessment Modelling and the student will be able to connect with analysts in these countries.

Activities will include:

• Review of the adequacy of IAM approaches for addressing questions of national and sub-national climate-compatible development.
• Questions to work on for each of the cases: what tools have been used so far; mapping of stakeholders involved; what have the studies missed; has action been taken starting from those studies; is there evidence of policies having picked them up; how open, transparent, auditable were the studies; what data was used; what data was missing; what approaches were taken to address the data gaps; do these approaches make sense to local stakeholders?
• Potential to carry out interviews to the national stakeholders and analysts.
• Propose new approaches for each of the cases, to address any potential gaps & compare the approaches and extract potential overlaps / common lessons.

Learning outcomes

After completing the thesis work, the student will be able to:

• Understand where modelling tools fit within political processes towards achieving the Paris Agreement.
• Critically discuss the support modelling tools can provide for policy making towards sustainable development.
• Authoritatively elaborate recommendations for the correct use of modelling tools in support of sustainable development.

Criteria for evaluation

Key in the whole work and method development, and key metric for final assessment, will be:

• Fulfilment of the ILOs for Master Thesis at KTH’s ITM School.
• The student’s own initiative and customisation of the research questions.
• A critical view and critical discussion of aspects.
• Consideration of the literature.
• Willingness to engage with local stakeholders is welcome.
• Capacity of synthesising everything in a well-written, complete, not lengthy and good English thesis report.

If the work is of good quality and if the student wishes, we will set the work up from the beginning to be suitable for submission to a high-quality journal as a publication.

Prerequisites

There is no strict pre-requisite other than interest in making a difference towards sustainable development and commitment.

Specialization track

Transformation of Energy System (TES)

Division/Department

Division of Energy Systems  – Department of Energy Technology

Research areas:

• Integrated Climate, Land, Energy and Water Systems
• Science-Policy-Society Interactions

Duration: 6 months, start at anytime.

How to apply

Send an email expressing your interest in the topic to Francesco Garumi .

Supervision