18 May 2021 - Stakeholder national workshops

Decarbonisation in the Central Asia and Caspian region: the third (final) of a series of workshops

On the 18th of May 2021, the PARIS REINFORCE project held its third and final virtual workshop focussing upon the Central Asian and Caspian region. The goal of this final workshop was to inform regional stakeholders on the progress of the exercise presented during the previous two regional workshops (9th December 2020 and 2nd of March 2021), and receive a final round of their insights.

To this end, stakeholders from the first and second workshops from national governments, NGOs, the private sector, international institutions, and academia were invited for the last meeting. Stakeholders were in attendance from Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan, and from the neighbouring Ukraine (IEA, EU4Energy).

In the first session of the workshop, Mr. Rocco De Miglio (E4SMA) introduced the latest progress in the TIMES-CAC modelling exercise. Stakeholders' insights collected during the previous workshops and in bilateral discussions were elaborated in three final storylines, including some variants: Where are We Headed, NDC-like, and Deep Mitigation.

The total number of scenarios developed in this last phase of the analysis was eight (all included in the dashboard).

The topics investigated were mainly about the “Watergy”, the correlation between power production and water consumption, and commodity tariffs phase-outs, in combination with GHG reduction targets.

“Watergy” has been quantitatively analysed by activating part of the “water module” for the TIMES-CAC model. The possibility to control water consumption improved the analysis and gave new elements to define scenarios, for example by analysing the response of the model to water-related constraints.

Tariffs have been investigated by cross-checking 2017-2020 end-use tariffs per country per sector, based on data collected in documents from international organisations (e.g., IRENA, IEA, etc.) and Ministry publications from national and international websites, and by making assumptions about their evolutions and phase out.

In this session, Mr. Konstantinos Koasidis (NTUA) also presented the results of the stakeholder assessment on SDGs and climate action that were kindly provided by stakeholders during the first workshop, and then processed making use of a Multi-Criteria Group Decision and Consensus Analysis framework.

During the second session Mr. Gabriele Cassetti (E4SMA) introduced the CAC Forum (https://cac.tribe.so), a tool built to continue the dialogue with stakeholders after the series of workshops. The main features of the forum were presented and described.

Participants were then invited in the final discussion session to allow for more focused discussion. The session was chaired by Mr. Rocco De Miglio (E4SMA). Some of the main topics discussed were around the possibility to simulate net-zero emissions in the region by 2050 (in particular in Uzbekistan), the capability to manage public funded / private investments (with different risks/discount rates), and define service-related, or consumption-related, tariffs for the energy commodities.

The dashboard used for the visualisation of the key performance indicators relevant to the TIMES-CAC model was illustrated, enriched with the new indicator of water consumption in the power sector for each scenario, and used to demonstrate the response of the underlying energy system model to the various scenario elements.

Key outputs from this last session will be used to further develop the analysis of the CAC energy system and continue sharing knowledge and experience, from now on by moving to the new channel of the CAC Forum.

 

Presentations:

Rocco De Miglio - Modelling update following second stakeholder workshop

Konstantinos Koasidis - Results of the stakeholder-driven multi-criteria decision and consensus analysis

 

Agenda: