Assessment of Current Climate Services for Energy Resilience in West Africa: the Case of Senegal

Abstract

The rapid growth of renewable energy deployment in West Africa, coupled with the anticipated impacts of climate change on the energy sector, highlights the need to evaluate the effectiveness of climate services in enhancing energy resilience. Climate services (CS) play a crucial role in providing valuable information and insights to support decision-making and contribute to the resilience of the energy sector in the face of climate change impacts. This thesis investigated the performance of CS in the energy sector over West Africa with a focus on Senegal towards an improved resilience and sustainability of the energy sector to climate variability and change. A mixed-methods approach is employed which combines qualitative and quantitative analyses. The qualitative approach used is a semi-structured interview with key stakeholders in the energy and meteorological sectors to acquire a deeper understanding of how climate services are accessed and utilized. The quantitative analysis employs a dual approach which includes using data from regional climate models driven by global climate models to project the future climate change impacts on solar PV and wind energy potential in West Africa and Senegal, under RCP2.6 and RCP8.5. The other approach is to assess the impacts of different shortwave radiation schemes (Dudhia and RRTMG) in the WRF-Solar model for Global Horizontal Irradiance (GHI) forecasting in two solar plants in Senegal (Diass and Ten Merina). Two simulations were conducted for the RRTMG scheme, one without aerosol optical depth (AOD) and one with AOD (RRTMG_AOD). The results and outcomes respectively show limited collaboration between the energy and meteorological sectors, resulting in challenges in accessing essential climate-related information for decision-making processes. Projections from regional climate models show a general decline in solar PV potential by approximately -2% in the near future and -4% in the far future across the region. The wind power density (WPD) is anticipated to increase by around 20% in the near future and 40% in the far future. Furthermore, the findings reveal that the RRTMG_AERO scheme outperforms the Dudhia and RRTMG schemes in both solar plants. The RRTMG_AERO scheme demonstrates superior performance across clear sky, cloudy sky, and all-sky conditions, despite notable biases, particularly in cloudy sky conditions. This study offers valuable insights for policymakers, energy sector stakeholders, and meteorological agencies.