M-LED: Multi-sectoral Latent Electricity Demand Assessment for Energy Access Planning

69 Pages Posted: 29 Sep 2020

See all articles by Giacomo Falchetta

Giacomo Falchetta

Fondazione Eni Enrico Mattei (FEEM)

Nicolò Stevanato

Fondazione Eni Enrico Mattei

Magda Moner-Girona

European Commission, Joint Research Centre (JRC)

Davide Mazzoni

Fondazione Eni Enrico Mattei

Emanuela Colombo

Polytechnic University of Milan

Manfred Hafner

Fondazione Eni Enrico Mattei

Date Written: September 28, 2020

Abstract

Globally about 800 million people live without electricity at home, over two thirds of which are in sub-Saharan Africa. Ending energy poverty is a key development priority because energy plays an enabling role for human wellbeing and economic activities. Planning electricity access infrastructure and allocating resources efficiently requires a careful assessment of the diverse energy needs across space, time, and sectors. However, because of data scarcity, most country or regional-scale electrification planning studies have been based on top-down electricity demand targets. Yet, poorly representing the heterogeneity in the electricity demand can lead to inappropriate energy planning, inaccurate energy system sizing, and misleading cost assessments. Here we introduce M-LED, Multi-sectoral Latent Electricity Demand, a geospatial data processing platform to estimate electricity demand in communities that live in energy poverty. The key novelties of the platform are the multi-sectoral, bottom-up, time-explicit demand evaluation and the assessment of water-energy-agriculture-development interlinkages. We apply the methodology to the country-study of Kenya. Our findings suggest that a bottom-up approach to evaluating energy needs across space, time, and sectors is likely to improve the reliability and accuracy of supply-side electrification modelling and therefore of electrification planning and policy.

Keywords: Electricity Access, Energy Demand, Rural Development, Bottom-up Modelling, Sub-Saharan Africa, Multi-sectoral Approach, Water-Energy-Food-Environment Nexus

JEL Classification: Q4, Q41, O13

Suggested Citation

Falchetta, Giacomo and Stevanato, Nicolò and Moner-Girona, Magda and Mazzoni, Davide and Colombo, Emanuela and Hafner, Manfred, M-LED: Multi-sectoral Latent Electricity Demand Assessment for Energy Access Planning (September 28, 2020). FEEM Working Paper No. 9.2020, Environmental Research Letters, Volume 16, Number 7, https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/ac0cab/meta, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3700858 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3700858

Giacomo Falchetta (Contact Author)

Fondazione Eni Enrico Mattei (FEEM) ( email )

C.so Magenta 63
Milano, 20123
Italy

Nicolò Stevanato

Fondazione Eni Enrico Mattei ( email )

Italy

Magda Moner-Girona

European Commission, Joint Research Centre (JRC) ( email )

Via E. Fermi 2749
Brussels, B-1049
Belgium

Davide Mazzoni

Fondazione Eni Enrico Mattei ( email )

Italy

Emanuela Colombo

Polytechnic University of Milan ( email )

Piazza Leonardo da Vinci
Milan, Milano 20100
Italy

Manfred Hafner

Fondazione Eni Enrico Mattei ( email )

Corso Magenta 63
20123 Milan
Italy

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