IAM COMPACT capacity development workshop in Sri Lanka

The IAM COMPACT capacity building workshop "Integrated Assessment Modelling of Climate and Energy Policies in Sri Lanka" took place on January 30, 2024, online. 

The workshop aimed to introduce participants to the concept of integrated assessment modelling for enhancing the comprehensibility of Sri Lanka's ambitious energy and climate policies. As an island nation, Sri Lanka faces critical interdependencies between climate, energy, water, and land-use systems. The workshop thus focused on existing local modelling knowledge and capacity gaps and hence bolsters in promoting fit-for-purpose and sustainable modelling knowledge transfer in our capacity development activities on the selected models. 

It kicked off with a discussion on key policy priorities towards meeting the climate targets in Sri Lanka and the interlinkages that exist, or may arise, across energy, land, climate, and water systems in the country with regards to the key polices identified. It then proceeded with an introduction to the Climate, Land-use, Energy, Water Systems (CLEWs) framework, on which it concluded with a hands-on session. 

Participants stressed the importance of assessing the feasibility of climate targets and pledges in Sri Lanka, mentioning that they could be at odds with its necessity for economic growth, given its very low historical responsibility in terms of emissions as well as its low per capita emissions. Difficulty in acquiring reliable data, and lack of communication between authorities were identified as main bottlenecks in energy modelling and policy planning. Land availability and water scarcity are considered key barriers for the development of ground-mounted solar and pumped hydro, with possible areas for further research and development being the utilisation of micro hydro along irrigation channels, ocean energy technologies, rooftop PV, agricultural waste from biomass, and agrovoltaics. 

The workshop was organised by Rajarata University of Sri Lanka, KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Politecnico di Milano, and National Technical University of Athens.

It was out initial effort for a continuous dialogue with local stakeholders, in a demand-driven process aiming for a learning-by-doing approach, re-use of teaching and modelling material locally, and production of open-access modelling tools for Sri Lanka. The results of this process will be documented in MS6 - Training material on concepts & tools (Feb 2024) and D6.7 - Open-access models for case-study countries (Aug 2024).