Abstract: Ghana, a West African nation of 28 million people, provides an interesting case study on the interaction between power supply and politics in emerging economies. From 2012-2016, due to security of supply issues around hydro and fuel supplies, Ghana experienced the worst power crisis in its history with regular rolling black-outs. Rural and low-income urban areas and businesses were especially affected, and public discontent was palpable. The government’s response was a reactive approach to generation expansion planning, focused on increasing supply. Power generation was opened up to the private sector and emergency power plants were procured. 93 percent of capacity installed during this post-crisis period was thermal genera-tion, which increased dependence on natural gas and crude oil. Overall, this power crisis highlighted the cost of overlooking reliability and an undiversified generation mix.

I adapted a modeling framework to study Ghana’s power generation system and I use a bottom-up capacity expansion and economic dispatch model to explore capac-ity expansion pathways in Ghana under different settings, with the goal of providing insight into Ghana’s capacity expansion decisions and identifying strategies that can help ensure better reliability and resiliency. Secondly, I use qualitative methods to evaluate Ghana’s electricity infrastructure project financing framework to discuss how project financing shapes technology choices. I then explore potential policy and legal instruments that could support more robust systems planning in Ghana’s elec-tricity generation sector. Results reveal that a future power crisis is very likely given he high sensitivity of system reliability and resilience to natural gas and crude oil supply, global energy prices and transmission constraints. Strategies that could help avoid a future crisis include diversifying the generation mix, adding flexible gener-ation (such as pumped hydro) to the mix, increasing transmission, and increasing the stability of fuel supply. This requires a holistic and coordinated approach to electricity planning between financial, technical, technological and political actors in the power generation sector.

Abstract: Despite losing its low-carbon energy transition path in the last decade, Spain, since 2017, has picked up its commitment to complying with the objectives set out in the Paris Agreement for ratcheting 2030 and 2050 ambitions. This research departs from an extensive in-depth expert stakeholder engagement, proposing a research process of scoping: reaching out to academics, NGOs, administrators, energy providers and the private sector among other agents that guide the future of transitions in Spain; listening: identifying, through interviews, the knowledge gaps; understanding: manifesting answers of the multitude of over 200 expert stakeholders and participating: extending out and disseminating results. We present five central emerging themes on: ambitions and temporalities of targets highlighting ambition gaps across stakeholder groups for 2030 and 2050 objectives; the future of carbon and nuclear energy pushing for eventual closure of both across distinct points in time; the rollout of renewable energy technologies in a transition pursuit; preferences on fiscal and policy measures to facilitate investments and priority sectors of action and ultimately discuss gender equality and justice, and the lack thereof, in energy decision making. Our research summons up the delicate intricacies of the transition debate in Spain, setting a discursive space in hopes of contributing to the future design of the Law on Climate Change and Energy Transition.

Abstract: Under the Kigali Amendment to the Montreal Protocol, new controls are being implemented to reduce emissions of HFC-23 (CHF33), a by-product during the manufacture of HCFC-22 (CHClF22). Starting in 2015, China and India, who dominate global HCFC-22 production (75% in 2017), set out ambitious programs to reduce HFC-23 emissions. Here, we estimate that these measures should have seen global emissions drop by 87% between 2014 and 2017. Instead, atmospheric observations show that emissions have increased and in 2018 were higher than at any point in history (15.9 ± 0.9 Gg yr−1± 0.9 Gg yr−1). Given the magnitude of the discrepancy between expected and observation-inferred emissions, it is likely that the reported reductions have not fully materialized or there may be substantial unreported production of HCFC-22, resulting in unaccounted-for HFC-23 by-product emissions. The difference between reported and observation-inferred estimates suggests that an additional ~309 Tg CO2CO2-equivalent emissions were added to the atmosphere between 2015 and 2017.