How to reconcile environmental and geostrategic issues in the energy mix evolution of emerging economies?

Since the emergence of the electric power generation industry, the proper expansion of electricity mix is an essential part of the sustainable development. Among the issues raised by energy economists and policy makers, the implementation of appropriate investment mechanisms and strategy is a major challenge for their development in a reliable, profitable, and sustainable way.
National power generation mix composition is based on the ranking of various sources of production according to their marginal cost of electricity generation. The purpose of this research is to analyze the electricity systems and markets of developing economies by constructing an optimal electricity mix based on rational use of production units from both economic and geopolitical points of view. For this purpose, we need to first assess the current and future (most probable and optimal) situation of electricity mix in our targeting systems. This will be performed through the application of various modeling approaches such as portfolio-optimization or mathematical programming (linear/dynamic/statistical). Thereafter, we will conduct a scenario analysis and sensitivity studies so as to measure the optimality and efficiency of each electricity system by taking into account the uncertainties related to economic/financial, geopolitical and of course environmental matters.
The research will be applied mainly to Asia with a particular focus on China and India (and their interactions with Japan, Australia…). This is not only because of the importance of these electricity markets in terms of rapid development but also different options envisaged in each country for the evolution of the electricity networks (considerable investments, smarter systems, de-carbonization…) and expansion of all sources of electricity including renewable energies.
At the end of the research, the analysis will deliver a better vision about the socio-economic issues associated with the development and evolution of electricity mix in developing countries. This will be done by evaluating the effects of geopolitical, economic, and environmental uncertainties integration in various selected scenarios and their impact on the total cost of electricity mix and consequently the associated social welfare. Eventually a comparative analysis will be realized based on the above-mentioned studies outcome. This will be done for better illustrating the similarity and especially differences of each national technology mix and related energy policies. 
 

Mots clés : Energy Systems, Renewable Energy, Electricity Market, Economic Model, Optimization