Energy System Modeling Tools: Review and Comparison in the Context of Developing Countries

A Review on the Internalization of Externalities in Electricity Generation Expansion Planning

“…The authors claimed that in developing countries, energy planning models are predominantly concerned with increasing energy access, and not as much with GHG emissions. This is in line also with the findings of Urban et al [98] that many models are biased towards industrialized countries and do not reflect the main characteristics and unique features of developing countries [99]. Therefore, future research must be directed toward the development or adaptation of energy models to the socioeconomic, political, organizational, and resource context of the region or country under analysis, and to the suitable integration of the regional diversity that may compose one energy system.…”

‘Context really matters’ - The role of energy system modelling in policymaking in low- and middle-income countries

“…Furthermore, participants emphasized the importance of using country-speci c data, such as technology costs, grid e ciencies and losses, differences in rural and urban energy demands, and the availability of technologies and services such as internet connections. This underscored the need for adapting models not only to the unique characteristics of LMICs [10,20], but also to each country's individual circumstances. Participants criticised that especially external modelers often built models based on inappropriate data which failed to re ect local realities, as one participant highlighted:…”

“…Following the oil crisis of the 1970s, as well as increasing climate awareness and technological developments in the 1980s and 1990s, many energy models have been developed in and applied to highincome countries (HICs) [7][8][9][10], as well as Latin American countries [11][12][13]. Since the 2015 Paris Agreement, signatories have been required to develop national climate commitments, including Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) and long-term strategies.…”

“…For example, energy modelling studies have been developed for Ghana [16], Pakistan [17], Indonesia [18] and Ethiopia [19]. However, many models, having been developed in HICs, and transferred to LMICs, are biased towards HIC contexts and do not account for the unique characteristics of LMICs, such as different costs of capital, regulatory structures, low levels of access to electricity, high usage of traditional biomass, political instability, informal economies, and higher climate vulnerability [9,10,[19][20][21][22][23][24]. Furthermore, many models focus on reducing emissions in the energy sector, which may not be a priority for LMICs with low baseline emissions and low levels of electricity access [5,24].…”

“…Likewise, Abrahams et al (2023) point out that the majority of energy modelling research on Africa was conducted by non-Africa-based authors [15]. This dynamic of external leadership has been criticised for lacking context-speci c knowledge and sensitivity and for neglecting the different socioeconomic dynamics of countries [5,20,39]. For example, global integrated assessment models, such as the ones drawn on by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, tend to poorly represent African countries, for instance by pooling together Africa and the Middle East as a region [5].…”