Development of a national water‐energy system model with emphasis on the power sector for south africa

Ahjum, Fadiel; Merven, Bruno; Cullis, James; Goldstein, Gary; DeLaquil, Pat; Stone, Adrian

doi:10.1002/ep.12837

Cited by 8 publications

(5 citation statements)

References 5 publications

(10 reference statements)

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“…A more comprehensive illustration of existing nexus research is shown in Figure 6, in which black lines represent a focus on the study of a particular resource (e.g., food, energy, or water), yellow lines indicate the study of integrated systems with two principal resources, and gray dashed lines emphasize the interlinkages of subsections of different nexuses. In terms of focus and level of integration, 29 papers focused on the FEW nexus, but these mostly aimed to conduct general analysis and systematic review, whereas 10 papers focused on water (Larsen & Drews, 2019;Rosa & D'Odorico, 2019), 5 on food (Abdelkader et al, 2018;Neto et al, 2018;Zhang, Campana et al, 2018), 4 on energy (Yuan et al, 2018;Ahjum et al, 2018;Whitney et al, 2019), 9 on water-energy nexus (Engstr€ om et al, 2017;Wang et al, 2017;Liu et al, 2019), 2 on energyfood (Hanes et al, 2018), and 1 on water-food (Zhang & Vesselinov, 2017). The rest of the articles applied nexus research from various angles.…”

Section: Featured Analysis Of the Few Nexus Literaturementioning

confidence: 99%

“…In addition, Kumazawa et al (2017) proposed a knowledge sharing and collaboration tool for interdisciplinary research based on an ontology engineering approach, which is a type of semantic web technology that offers common terms, concepts, and semantics. Ahjum et al (2018) conducted a case study of a water-for-energy development nexus based on the South African national energy-economic system model. The model is a non-spatial national representation of energy goods, service flows, and energy technologies with associated costs and emissions.…”

Section: Tools and Techniquesmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Integrative technology hubs for urban food-energy-water nexuses and cost-benefit-risk tradeoffs (II): Design strategies for urban sustainability

Chang

Hossain

Valencia

et al. 2020

Critical Reviews in Environmental Science and Technology

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The Food-Energy-Water (FEW) nexus for urban sustainability needs to be analyzed via an integrative rather than a sectoral or silo approach, reflecting the ongoing transition from separate infrastructure systems to an integrated social-ecological-infrastructure system. As technology hubs can provide food, energy, water resources via decentralized and/ or centralized facilities, there is an acute need to optimize FEW infrastructures by considering cost-benefit-risk tradeoffs with respect to multiple sustainability indicators. This paper identifies, categorizes, and analyzes global trends with respect to contemporary FEW technology metrics that highlights the possible optimal integration of a broad spectrum of technology hubs for possible cost-benefit-risk tradeoffs. The challenges related to multiscale and multiagent modeling processes for the simulation of urban FEW systems were discussed with respect to the aspects of scaling-up, optimization process, and risk assessment. Our review reveals that this field is growing at a rapid pace and the previous selection of analytical methodologies, nexus criteria, and sustainability indicators largely depended on individual FEW nexus conditions disparately, and full-scale cost-benefit-risk tradeoffs CONTACT Ni-Bin Chang

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Section: Featured Analysis Of the Few Nexus Literaturementioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Tools and Techniquesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Integrative technology hubs for urban food-energy-water nexuses and cost-benefit-risk tradeoffs (II): Design strategies for urban sustainability

Chang

Hossain

Valencia

et al. 2020

Critical Reviews in Environmental Science and Technology

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“…A fossil future in Zimbabwe would involve the continued expansion of its coal-fired power plants. In the same way as its water scarce neighbor in the South, dry cooling technology might be employed to ensure its resilience to low water availability [43]. While unlikely, a future based on coal provides this analysis (as it has done others) with a convenient backdrop against which lower carbon futures might be evaluated [44].…”

Section: A Fossil Futurementioning

confidence: 99%

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

2021

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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.

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“…A Fossil Future A fossil future in Zimbabwe would involve the continued expansion of its coal-fired power plants. Like its water scarce neighbor in the South, dry cooling technology might be employed to ensure it resilience to low water availability (Ahjum 2018). While unlikely, a future based on coal provides this analysis (as it has done others) with a convenient backdrop against which lower carbon futures might be evaluated (Sims et al 2003).…”

Section: Electricity Futures In Zimbabwementioning

confidence: 99%

Potential Climate Change Risks to Meeting Zimbabwe’s NDC Goals — And how to Become Resilient

Howells¹,

Boehlert²,

Benítez³

2021

Preprint

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Zimbabwe has ambitious and laudable GHG mitigation targets. Compared to a coal based future emissions reductions by 33% per capita by 2030 are targeted, by implementing a set of identified nationally determined contributions (NDCs). If historical climate conditions continue, it can do this at low or negative cost. However, anticipated conditions may not continue, and of the planned emissions reductions in the NDCs, 88% would come from the expansion of hydropower, which is driven by rainfall. If climate change causes the extreme droughts witnessed in recent years to become more frequent, embarking on Zimbabwe’s NDC future (underpinned by its official system development plan) may be expensive and further cripple the economy. Note that the economy is already being strangled by constrained power supplies due to unusually dry conditions in the Zambezi river basin. If the NDC Future is pursued, but the climate becomes drier, proactive efforts might be made to overcome the power shortages. However, this may result in a rapid ramp up of greenhouse gas emissions if the country turns to coal to reinforce its system and increase its resilience against hydropower vulnerability and the costs that would otherwise ensue. If the country were to keep its NDC investments and supplement them with more aggressive deployment of clean adaptation options, strongly positive outcomes appear possible. Specifically, this would require increased deployment of renewable energy technologies, a restructured power market, and deep increases in energy efficiency investments. In so doing, the country would not only exceed its NDC targets, but also reduce costs in a manner that is climate resilient. This would not remove the country's need for hydropower and some level of coal reliance. However, it will introduce requirements to ensure flexibility in both hydropower and coal power production. For hydropower, power stations will need to provide and be recompensed for providing ‘balancing services’, that is, storing water and producing electricity when the wind is not blowing, nor sun shining. In order to ensure continuous output from mines, it may require intelligent stockpiling combined with dynamic forecasting. This would apply not only to production in Zimbabwe, but potentially for neighboring countries. Doing so would allow predictable mining activities, but allow electricity systems to absorb low cost, low carbon hydropower at high rainfall periods. To make the NDCs resilient via clean adaptation, strong institutional restructuring is required. However, internalizing those costs and moving to advanced market structures and business cases may strain the capacity of current institutions.

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Development of a national water‐energy system model with emphasis on the power sector for south africa

Cited by 8 publications

References 5 publications

Integrative technology hubs for urban food-energy-water nexuses and cost-benefit-risk tradeoffs (II): Design strategies for urban sustainability

Integrative technology hubs for urban food-energy-water nexuses and cost-benefit-risk tradeoffs (II): Design strategies for urban sustainability

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

Potential Climate Change Risks to Meeting Zimbabwe’s NDC Goals — And how to Become Resilient

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