Bridging energy systems and finance: towards integrated national energy planning

Unofficial AI-generated summary based on the public title and abstract. Not an official translation.

🔬研究者:The soft-linking methodology and the identification of economic-financial viability gaps offer a novel framework for energy system modellers to incorporate financial realism.

🏢実務担当者:Energy planners and project developers can use IMPACCT's screening approach to assess the financial viability of renewable projects under realistic conditions.

🏛政策担当者:The financial viability warning signal provides evidence for designing targeted policy support to bridge the gap between economically optimal and financially bankable technologies.

Energy enables economic development, social well-being, and the provision of essential services. As global energy demand continues to grow, particularly in developing countries, the challenge is no longer only to supply energy but to do so sustainably. Achieving this requires careful planning across multiple sectors, in which decisions must balance trade-offs among cost, emissions, social outcomes, and financial feasibility. Energy modelling has emerged as a critical tool in this process, enabling decision-makers to explore future scenarios and formulate policies aligned with national development goals. However, existing modelling approaches have limitations in capturing the complex, interconnected nature of real-world energy systems. This thesis addresses these challenges by developing and validating an accessible, modular, open-source Integrated Assessment Model (IAM) designed to support more coherent and actionable energy planning. Accessibility is defined in the thesis by user familiarity, the availability of no-code or graphical interfaces, and the provision of structured pedagogical resources. This thesis begins by addressing key limitations in current energy system modelling that arise from applying a single technical optimisation tool to national energy planning. It demonstrates that while single technical optimisation models are effective in identifying cost-optimal pathways and enabling scenario analysis, their use in isolation fails to capture critical social and financial dimensions of real-world energy transitions. This highlighted the need for IAMs. However, a review of existing IAMs reveals that, despite methodological diversity, they are predominantly global or multi-regional in scope, techno-economic in focus, lacking representation of social and financial factors, and limited in transparency and accessibility. This reduces their applicability for national-level decision-making, particularly in developing country contexts. To overcome these problems, the thesis develops the Integrated Model for Policy, Actions, and Collaborative Transitions (IMPACCT), a modular framework that soft-links a suite of open-source energy planning tools across demand forecasting for electrified and unelectrified populations, system optimisation, environmental and social evaluation, flexibility assessment, and financial feasibility analysis at the national and utility scales. A structured set of tool-selection criteria ensures applicability in data- and capacity-constrained environments, while the framework enables iterative feedback between components to refine results across technical, social, and financial dimensions. Additionally, the soft-linking approach leverages users' existing familiarity with these tools while enabling the sequential exchange of information between institutional working groups. In parallel, a systematic approach to sectoral data collation for the power and transport sectors is introduced, incorporating standardised classifications, aligned temporal and spatial resolutions, and transparent documentation to support the application of IMPACCT. A traffic-light system and Statistical Data and Metadata eXchange (SDMX) Observation Status codes are also incorporated to communicate data quality and uncertainty. IMPACCT is applied and validated in a national case study of Vietnam, demonstrating its ability to link transport demand, power system expansion, social outcomes, and financial feasibility within a coherent, unidirectional modelling pipeline. Results show that the policy-planned capacity expansion of renewable technologies such as solar and wind is financially viable under current conditions, while biomass and waste-to-energy require targeted policy support. Crucially, the analysis identifies a financial viability warning signal: technologies that appear economically optimal in system-level models may, in practice, be financially non-bankable from an investor perspective without additional structural adjustments. This underscores the value of the framework as a high-level screening tool for detecting early-stage misalignments between economic and financial viability. In addition to highlighting these financial viability gaps, the integrated approach reveals important trade-offs between costs, emissions, and social impacts that are often overlooked in siloed analyses. Overall, the thesis advances methodological, data, and applied contributions to the field of national energy modelling and planning. By demonstrating the feasibility of soft-linking a suite of open-source tools, the research provides a transparent alternative to traditional, siloed modelling approaches. While the Vietnam case study focuses on the power and transport sectors, IMPACCT's modular architecture is designed for broader sectoral expansion, supporting more robust and financially grounded energy transition decision-making.

• openalex https://doi.org/10.26174/thesis.lboro.32804258first seen 2026-07-20 04:50:45