Open Modelling for Robust and Transparent Climate and Energy Policymaking

This work was supported also by the Climate Compatible Growth (CCG) programme, funded by the UK’s Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office. However, the views expressed herein do not necessarily reflect the UK government’s official policies. 

Abstract

With the increasing impact of climate change on our societies and the environment, there is urgent need for ambitious mitigation actions to ensure the effective implementation of the Paris Agreement. However, the current climate change regime is struggling with issues of trust and lack of transparency in its implementation process. Particularly, Low- and Midde- Income Countries (LMICs) have difficulties in defining realistic targets for their Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) and assessing robust strategies towards their implementation.

Quantitative models that focus on the integrated analysis of different resource systems, such as Integrated Assessment Models (IAMs), provide an important resource to conduct evidence-based analysis that can inform on possible technological pathways and enabling policies to achieve decarbonisation. However, their application to assessing mitigation strategies makes them subject to the deep uncertainties affecting the climate change problem, thus impacting the robustness and reliability of the results they deliver. In addition, their development has turned increasingly towards higher modelling detail and complexity, thus increasing the computational requirements needed to solve a model and hampering their ability to conduct scenario discovery analysis.

Open science is becoming a key approach to support more robust and transparent decision-making processes that can benefit society. Within the field of energy and resource systems planning, open-source tools and open data are becoming increasingly common as they facilitate more transparency and collaboration across stakeholders and decision-makers involved in the process. Thanks to their lower entry barriers, they offer access to knowledge and resources that otherwise would not be affordable particularly in developing countries where they are most needed, thus enabling locally driven context specific analysis. However, human and technical resources and capacity are currently lacking to ensure the uptake of open-source tools and open data and their related practices in LMICs.

To address these challenges and to enable more robust, transparent and accountable climate change policymaking, this doctoral thesis aims to critically examine the role of open-source tools and open data in supporting effective climate change mitigation action. Paper I and paper II illustrate the effectiveness of an open-source, highly aggregated, computationally lightweight techno-economic IAM to conduct scenario discovery analysis and assess robust climate change mitigation policies. Paper III follows by addressing the need for transparent and accountable NDCs for the implementation of the Paris Agreement, by developing a framework that relies on open-source tools and open data practices and resources to build self-sustaining capacity, particularly in LMICs, and enable locally driven quantitative and evidence-based analysis to support the NDCs development and implementation process. Finally, paper IV provides a first assessment of possible context-specific barriers and opportunities to the uptake of open science practices in support of long-term planning and policymaking efforts, particularly in Kenya as an example of LMIC where open resources might be most beneficial.

The thesis findings highlight that open-source tools and open data are well positioned to deliver robust, transparent and accountable insights to support climate change mitigation efforts and the implementation of the Paris Agreement. However, the incremental adaptation and implementation of open science practices to the delivery of robust and transparent climate change policies is bound to the local social, cultural, and political context defining the political economy of a country. This is illustrated by the case of Kenya’s energy data management and governance, where issues such as lack of trust among stakeholders and within society, as well as the lack of clear directives and guidance at the institutional level, challenge the adoption of common protocols in support of the energy planning process. Therefore, open science resources and practices need to be adapted to provide incremental degrees of openness and transparency that are respectful of the context in which they are to be applied, while allowing to gradually develop with it towards higher levels of openness.

Link to DiVA