South Africa After Paris—Fracking Its Way to the NDCs?

摘要: South Africa faces the triple challenge of (a) fueling its economic development by meeting rapidly growing energy demand; (b) increasing reliability power system; and (c) letting domestic greenhouse gas emissions peak between 2020 2025 in line with pledge to UNFCCC under Paris agreement. Recently discovered shale reserves are currently evaluation as a potential new source, provide clean, reliable cheap electricity while mitigating emissions. But, impact on is far from settled. In order evaluate if can play viable role solving Africa’s dilemma, we apply country-level version integrated assessment model MESSAGE analyze quantify interdependence extraction climate change mitigation e_ort regarding African pathways Our results illustrate, that low cost lower overall system costs compared no-shale-gas counterfactual. At same time, abundant natural sources requires stronger carbon price signal scenarios achieve desired goals. Therefore, reaching goals might be more economically achievable utilizing combination stringent policy measure scenario.