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Funding entity: European Commission, Horizon Europe

Coordinator: SINTEF Energi AS (Norway)

Partners: Électricité de France S.A. (France), Center de test des Systèmes Solaires (Senegal); Fondazione Eni Enrico Mattei – FEEM (Italy), Veritas Consulting (Ethiopia), Strathmore University (Kenya), Makerere University (Uganda), Technische Universität Berlin (Germany), Universidad Pontificia Comillas (Spain), RES4AFRICA (Italy), International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis – IIASA (Austria), École polytechnique fédéral de Lausanne (Switzerland), West African Power Pool (Benin), Haute École Spécialisée de Suisse Occidentale (Switzerland), African Power Pool (Ethiopia), Addis Ababa University (Ethiopia), Ministry of Water Irrigation and Energy (Ethiopia).

DESCRIPTION

OpenMod4Africa, a 3 years Horizon Europe project, aims to develop an open Toolbox populated with state-of-the-art models for analysing long-term pathways to sustainable, secure and competitive energy systems in Africa. The Toolbox will build on previous EU projects for energy system modelling, and will adapt and further develop open models in accordance with the African context and needs. FEEM will lead the integration of an existent model (ONsSET). The models are scalable, and can be applied to cities, industries and countries. Furthermore, a main objective for OpenMod4Africa is capacity building among energy models in academia. Four African universities will be actively involved in adapting models and conducting two regional case studies. The additional capacity and the open Toolbox will enable the universities to train new generations of energy modelling experts for the energy industries in Africa. Three decision-makers will also be engaged, together with a network of energy industries and universities in 25 African countries. These players will be invited to use the Toolbox, and to be involved in training activities. They will also be invited to a permanent network of expertise, which will be developed for further capacity building and collaboration beyond the project. Two case studies will develop energy pathways for rural areas, cities, countries and large regions of countries in Western and Eastern Africa. The replication strategies will pave the way for further analyses beyond the project. Finally, OpenMod4Africa aims to collaborate with other ongoing initiatives to maximize the impacts of the project and create synergies. The consortium consists of 17 partners, eight of which are African. Important long-term impacts from the three-year project include enabling academia and decision-makers in Africa to conduct their own analyses for the optimal development of their energy system, supplying energy to a much larger share of the population, and establishing a system based upon the abundant share of renewables on the continent.

Expected results

  • Development of an open access toolbox for energy modelling (OM4A Toolbox), tailored on the African context needs for the development of a sustainable, reliable and resilient system;
  • Development of an online learning platform as a support for future toolbox users, so that experts may continue to be trained also after the end of the 3 years Project;
  • Building an independent but organised network of energy modelling experts and African stakeholders that will stay active in the long term (after the conclusion of the project) and that will be able to support local policy/decision makers in the building of a sustainable, secure, competitive and resilient energy system;
  • Provide new insights into the possible pathways for the development of the African energy system (reports) and apply these to two case studies (WAPP e EAPP) by applying the OM4A Toolbox.

Policy and social impact

The toolbox will provide science-based results to policymakers and local actors, to assist them in analysing the environmental, social and economic synergies and trade-offs to be achieved in a clean energy transition in African countries, as well as the impact of increasing clean energy generation.

OpenMod4Africa will also contribute to extensive wider impacts for some of the SDG: SDG 7 “Affordable and clean energy”: promoting the use of renewable energies, that present the characteristics of being locally produced and reliable, will facilitate a full (clean) energy access; SDG2 “Zero hunger”: renewable technologies used in agriculture will be promoted, improving irrigation potential and then yields through solar PV or Agri photovoltaic; Economic growth is a direct consequence of a full energy access of the African population; SDG12 “Responsible consumption and production”, as the scenarios developed via the OM4A Toolbox will integrate environmental assessments and that renewable energies will reduce the pressure on local biomass by limiting deforestation; SDG5 “Gender equality”: as women are mostly the one in charge of getting woods or water when there is no reliable energy supply or that must suffer from unhealthy cooking solutions, then by pushing decision makers to implement secure, sustainable energy technologies, women’s life will be improved; SDG13 “climate action”: impact of climate change will be integrated in the scenarios, which will include complete removal of fossil fuels in the energy system, contributing then to a real shift towards a carbon-free energy system; SDG17 “partnership for the goals”, as the OM4A Toolbox will be a co-creation founded on a strong and intertwined cooperation between African and European researchers and stakeholders.

OpenMod4Africa project website