DOI: 10.14457/tu.the.2020.1027
title: Electricity planning in the selected GMS countries: Cambodia, Lao PDR, Thailand and Vietnam

description: In 2015, the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) agreed to adopt the Paris Agreement which aims to limit the mean global temperature increase to well below 2℃ by the end of the 21st century. All Parties were required to submit the Intended Nationally Determined Contribution (INDC) to the UNFCCC. The INDCs hold the pledged greenhouse gas (GHG) mitigation targets of each Party to contribute to the Paris Agreement targets. The total GHG emissions reduction targets of the selected GMS countries namely, Cambodia, Lao PDR, Thailand, and Vietnam collectively range from 177 to 339 Mt-CO2eq by 2030 when compared to the business-as-usual case. Nonetheless, the emissions gap report 2019 of the United Nations Environmental Programme states that to be able to reach the 2- degree goal of the Paris Agreement, the global annual GHG emissions reduction in 2030 has to be reduced by 15 Gt-CO2eq below the pledged unconditional NDCs targets. The global emissions gap will have to be fairly shared across all countries which indicates that the selected GMS countries will also have to reset the current NDCs targets to more ambitious targets.In the power sector of the selected GMS countries, the electricity demand and generation is increasing rapidly along with the economic growth. The firm dependency on fossil fuels in electricity generation within the four countries releases GHG emissions which leads to negative impacts on the atmosphere and the ecology system. In 2015, the total GHG emissions in the power sector in the selected GMS countries collectively amount to 166.91 Mt-CO2eq. The emissions are expected to keep increasing as the demand for electricity would increase in the future. A solution to restrict the increasing GHG emissions in the power sector is to shift from the use of fossil fuels to renewable energy sources. According to reports, the renewable energy sources technically available for the power sector are significant. However, the electricity generated from renewable energy in the four selected countries in 2015 collectively amounts to only 26.81% which points out that the potential of phasing out fossil fuels of the power sector is strong. In this case, the cleaner power sector in selected GMS countries would be able to contribute even more to the NDCs targets and the emissions gap of the 2-degree goal of the Paris Agreement.This study focuses on two main analyses which are the electricity planning analysis and the estimation of the emissions gap for the selected GMS countries. In this planning study, there are three scenarios namely, Business-as-Usual (BAU), Renewable Energy Technologies (RET), and Improved Energy Efficiency (IEE). The Low Emissions Analysis Platform (LEAP) model is used to determine the electricity generation, the electricity production cost, and the GHG emissions mitigation in the three scenarios. The BAU scenario is a scenario where the power generation in the selected GMS countries follows the Power Development Plan (PDP) and no other GHG emissions reduction constraints are considered. On the other hand, the RET scenario considers the high use of renewable energy in the power and the transport sectors in the selected GMS countries. The rates of penetration of renewable energy in RET scenario differ between each selected country. The IEE scenario covers the residential, commercial, power, and transport sectors in the selected GMS countries. Different rates of efficiency improvement in end-use equipment and the efficient equipment penetrations over the inefficient ones are considered in the IEE scenario. Furthermore, the study also considers the inclusion of the Marginal Abatement Cost (MAC) study to sort out the best and worst technologies or adopted measures in the selected GMS countries. For the emissions gap (excluding LULUCF emissions) estimation in the selected GMS countries, there are 7 scenarios including the baseline, the unconditional NDCs (NDC-U), the conditional NDCs (NDC-C), the doubled targets of conditional NDCs by 2050 (NDC-C-DOU), the tripled targets of conditional NDCs by 2050 (NDC-C-TRI), the 2-degree emissions pathway (2-D2050) scenario, and the 1.5-degree emissions pathway (1.5-D2050) scenario. Following the emissions gap, four effort-sharing approaches namely, Grandfathering (GF), Immediate Per Capita Convergence (IEPC), Per Capita Convergence (PCC), and Greenhouse Development Rights (GDR) are considered to estimate the carbon budgets (CO₂ emissions only) to further analyze the remaining allowable emissions (including LULUCF emissions) in the four countries to comply with the 2-degree goal and 1.5-degree target during 2011-2050.The results show that the electricity generated from renewable energy sources in 2050 would amount to 62% in the RET scenario and 41.9% in the IEE scenario. It would result in the GHG emissions mitigation in the power sector of about 63.6% in 2050 in the RET scenario and 5.1% in 2050 in the IEE scenario when compared to the BAU scenario. The CCS technologies considered in the power sector in the RET scenario collectively have the potential to mitigate about 225.75 Mt-CO2eq in 2050 in the selected GMS countries. The electricity demand of the electric vehicles in the transport sector in the selected four countries would collectively take up about 0.3% of the total electricity demand in 2050 in the IEE scenario. In addition, the emissions reductions in the transport sector in the RET and IEE scenarios in 2050 would be 2.8% and 69.5% respectively. With the reductions of GHG emissions in the power sector and the carbon tax of 9 $/t-CO2eq, the total electricity generation cost in the selected GMS countries in 2050 in the RET and IEE scenarios would be cut down by about 11.6% and 3% from the BAU scenario respectively. Besides, the findings of the MAC study suggest that the solar power plants would be the ideal technology to partially phase out the coal and natural gas power plants in the selected GMS countries in 2050.The findings of emissions gap analysis suggest that there would be still an emissions gap of 416 Mt-CO2eq in 2030 to reach the 2-degree emissions pathway of the Paris Agreement when considering the full achievement of the conditional NDCs targets of the selected GMS countries. In 2050, the gap would expand to 832 Mt-CO2eq. The emissions gap between the NDC-C-TRI scenario in which, the current NDCs targets are assumed to be tripled in 2050, and the 2-degree emissions pathway in 2050 would 89.9 Mt-CO2eq. The emissions gaps analysis indicates that if the targets of the NDCs of the selected GMS countries were to be set more ambitious in the future, the new targets would have to be more than the triple of the current conditional NDCs targets to have a chance of reaching the 2-degree emissions pathway of the Paris Agreement. Furthermore, the results of the carbon budgets estimation for the selected GMS countries based on the 2-degree goal show that the cumulative allowable emissions during 2011-2050 for the four countries would collectively amount to 13.71 Gt-CO2eq, 21.17 Gt-CO2eq, 17.44 Gt-CO2eq, and 21.89 Gt-CO2eq in the GF, IEPC, PCC, and GDR approach respectively.