Low Carbon Energy Transition In The Economic Community Of West African States Region:Policy Analysis

The thorny issue of low-carbon energy sources is gaining momentum around the world.In Africa,specifically in the Economic Community of West African States(ECOWAS),the transition to low-carbon energy presents many challenges,including those related to policy and effective implementation.Our thesis examines the regional policy environment for replacing the current fossil fuel-based economy with lowcarbon development that also advances regional goals and the Sustainable Development Goals(SDGs).In order to analyze the extent to which policies in ECOWAS countries can effectively encourage low-carbon development and what are the main obstacles to overcome,our work based on related research in the field provides the following contributions:First,this paper uses a comprehensive review methodology to examine how ECOWAS’s regional energy system is influenced by social,political,and economic issues.Following that,demand side management,clean energy generation,regional energy factors,and hydrocarbon exploration and production are taken into account in the analysis of regional energy policy.This work has provided insight into the status of the energy transition in the region while also capturing the regional and international factors that influence energy policy in the region.This review of the region’s energy system has identified four important categories that can be grouped together in the ECOWAS energy system.They are:Energy access,energy efficiency,renewable energy and climate change.In addition,the review of the region’s energy system allowed for the selection of six criteria that will be useful in guiding the two methods that will be used to evaluate the energy policies of ECOWAS countries.After the first phase,the second phase uses a combined method MCDA and comparison for the analysis of ECOWAS energy policies.It examines the extent to which ECOWAS countries’ policies could encourage successful low-carbon development and highlights the key issues using a multi-criteria decision analysis and a benchmarking method.In addition,75 policies were chosen from the policy review to serve as a reference for the study in the four categories of energy access,energy efficiency,renewable energy,and climate change.The National Energy Efficiency Action Plan(NEEAP)and the National Renewable Energy Action Plan’s(NREAP)progress are then compared as a result of the MCDA analysis.We found that only 26 of the 75 policies received a score above 50,highlighting the amount of work that remains to be done in the region.Yet,given some encouraging results from regional nations,it is possible to establish a better energy policy that effectively addresses the difficulties of the energy transition given the progress the region has achieved since the development of the National EE and RE Action Plans.Senegal,the nation whose policies received the highest ratings using this method,will be the focus of a case study that will add to the body of knowledge on the various energy policy evaluation approaches.Third,using the results obtained by the previous methods,we have developed a new innovative combined analysis approach.This new method combines the multicriteria decision analysis(MCDA)and the principal component analysis(PCA)method for the case study of Senegal(country having obtained the best scores during the previous analysis).By examining the situation Senegal’s current and future energy base as a West African country,it focused on how the country’s Sustainable Growth Goals(SDGs)can be achieved while promoting low-carbon development as an alternative to current fossil fuel-based economy.So,our new multi-criteria decision analysis based on principal component analysis(MCDA-PCA)method aids in evaluating how well Senegal’s policies support low-carbon development.The goal of the combined MCDA-PCA method is to minimize the subjective weighting that is usually seen when employing MCDA,using previously employed criteria;therefore the optimal weighting factor can be obtained in tandem with the PCA approach.It is therefore a question here of determining the best possible weightings for the six selected criteria.Thus,in order to determine the best weightings for the criteria C1 to C6,a principal component analysis(PCA)is carried out.The final weighted scores of the main PC A components are obtained.With regard to policy implications,this new combined MCDA-PCA approach confirms promising results for the effective implementation of the energy transition in Senegal,although challenges remain,as evidenced by the fact that out of the 17 Senegalese policies analyzed,9 obtained a final score lower than 50.Most of the efforts with scores above 60 are electrification and renewable energy initiatives.Except from the NEEAP,which has allowed Senegal to advance in this area,development in energy efficiency has been slow despite the country’s lofty aspirations for energy access and renewable energy,as shown by the policies we looked at.Most energy efficiency projects have achieved less than 60.Regulations must include measures to maintain renewable energy technology as well as private investment or international cooperation,which is the biggest barrier to improving energy efficiency in Senegal.Our newly developed method enriches past literature that has used MCDA analysis.Our combined MCDA-PCA approach contributes to solving the optimal weighting problem crucial to a better evaluation of energy policy.The MCDA approach’s challenge is figuring out the best weighting that will enable a neutral and objective examination.In other words,the attribute weights significantly affect how the political analysis turns out.The normalized version of the best linear combination of the initial criterion with the most information that has been summarized is the best weighted factor in our methodology.Calculating the proper weighted factors involves determining the proportion of the data provided by the six criteria that is maintained by the primary components.Statistics show that the fraction of the information fits well for a main component.The primary component corresponding to the higher it is statistically more significant.Out of the six retrieved principal components,the first(comp1)most accurately captures the values of each policy’s C1-C6 criteria.It contains 81.15%of the information on energy policy offered by the six criteria and was used to rate the policies.Future research should take into account the likelihood that the third technique,the one we used in our work,could have a lower information explanation share from the first principle component(less than 50%of the total variance)when the number of criteria is considerable.If only one principal component were applied in this case,the analysis would suffer.We recommend either a fresh PCA based on the primary components or a higher dimensional representation in this situation(using two or three components).This method described in our research can be used as a crucial standard for the assessment of low carbon policy evaluation and energy projects.The framework for evaluating low carbon energy transition policies in the ECOWAS nations and the analysis methods put out in this research offer fresh perspectives to the literature on the sub-regional and national levels.