Access to affordable energy is crucial for the implementation of development goals including the Millennium Development Goals (MSGs). In turn, decisions on energy choices have considerable influence on the socio-economic development in a country or region. An inappropriate combination of energy choices or an exclusive focus on supply without due regard of demand side issues and efficiency can cause major stresses and challenges of social, economic or environmental nature and may compromise progress towards achieving the sustainable development goals. Designing balanced demand and supply energy strategies that would ensure compatibility with sustainability requires a comprehensive assessment of all the energy options by taking into account their technical, economic and environmental aspects and evaluation of trade-offs between the conflicting factors. Expertise to undertake such an exercise is often lacking in developing countries. This training course will help bridge that gap and will contribute to capacity building in developing countries for comprehensive energy system planning. It is intended for enhancing the skills of energy analysts/planners in developing countries to identify and assess the linkages between energy choices and sustainable development, evaluate and compare energy options in term of their technical, economic and environmental aspects and design alternative energy strategies and assess their consequences for sustainable development.

Energy is essential to all human activities and, indeed, critical to social and economic development. Lack of energy is one of the major contributing factors to perpetual poverty for individuals, communities and nations, whereas, access to energy opens up many new opportunities for improving the living conditions of poor. The United Nations Millennium Development Goals cannot be accomplished without access to affordable energy services.

Reducing energy poverty involves decisions by many players, from both public and private sectors, ranging from choices on energy sources, energy supply and demand technologies and their techno-economic characteristics (efficiency, costs, emission), institutional and regulatory framework, fiscal and financial policies and other related areas.

Today?s choices about how energy is produced and used will determine the sustainability of the future energy system and, thereby, of socioeconomic progress. Most energy plants and equipment have long operating lives (25? 40 years and more). At the same time, the extraction, conversion and use of energy always generate undesirable by-products and emissions. Inappropriate exploitation of energy sources can have devastating effects on the natural systems that support life on this planet.

Energy policy makers and planners, particularly in developing countries, are confronted with balancing several conflicting factors, like affordability, energy security, environmental compatibility, etc. They need to identify the options, compare their respective costs and benefits, especially with respect to access, assess the environmental impacts, evaluate trade-offs and compare the consequences. The necessary expertise and skills to undertake such a comprehensive assessment is often lacking in developing countries.

The main objective of the course is to introduce an analytical framework that helps design alternative energy strategies and evaluate their compatibility with sustainable development objectives with emphasis on reducing energy poverty. The course aims at enhancing the capabilities of energy analysts/planner, specifically from developing countries, to conduct detailed assessment of energy options in terms of their technical, economic and environmental aspects and formulate strategies for the development and expansion of energy infrastructure for meeting future energy needs and increasing access for those currently without it.

The course will consist of lectures, hands-on work sessions and Q&A discussion sessions. The course will introduce (i) methodological as well as practical aspects of energy planning, and (ii) techno-economic and environmental comparison of energy supply-demand options with a focus on energy efficiency. The learning process will be augmented with demonstration of simple case studies that closely resemble the energy situation in developing countries. The information and data for these case studies will be provided as the course material. The participants will be encouraged to modify the demonstration cases and experiment with different combinations of the supply-demand options.
The IAEA?s energy planning model MESSAGE will be used as the main analytical framework for designing and evaluation of alternative energy strategies. MESSAGE combines technologies and fuels to construct so-called ?energy chains?, making it possible to map energy flows from supply (resource extraction) to demand (energy services). The model is specifically very helpful for designing and evaluating long term strategies by analysing cost optimal energy mixes, investment needs and other costs for new infrastructure, energy supply security, energy resource utilization, rate of introduction of new technologies (technology learning), environmental constraints, etc.

The training material comprising lectures, reference documents and the MESSAGE software will be distributed to the participants in electronic form.

The course will utilise a suite of multiple techniques for training. Lectures by international experts will introduce the linkage between energy and sustainable development, a special eLearning package will allow self-learning about the functionality of the MESSAGE model, demonstration case studies will highlight the analysis techniques, the work session will allow experimentation with demonstration case, and Q&A discussion sessions will help analyse the effectiveness of supply and demand side efficiency measures.

The course will strengthen the capabilities of energy analysts/planners to understand the linkages between energy choices and sustainable development with access to affordable energy services being a benchmark. It will enable them to evaluate and compare energy supply and demand side options in term of their technical, economic and environmental aspects and help design alternative energy strategies and assess their consequences for sustainable development. It will equip the participants will a suitable analytical tool with adequate skills to use it for energy studies.