SCS4: Clean Energy Pathways for a Global South Just Transition: Evidence from the MCET Network

The Global South faces a dual imperative: expanding energy access while rapidly decarbonizing power systems under tight fiscal constraints. Yet most electricity transition modeling focuses on OECD contexts, overlooking critical equity dimensions-territorial justice, tariff affordability, demand-side participation, and employment transitions-that are central to just transition frameworks in developing economies.
This special session presents coordinated research from the Multi-Country Electricity Transition (MCET) Network, part of the RESET Network (Solutions for South-Led Just Energy Transitions). Using the open-source SWITCH electricity planning model, researchers from Asia and Latin America examine how technology optimization, demand flexibility mechanisms, and multiple dimensions of justice can be integrated into power sector planning across diverse national contexts.
The session brings together five complementary perspectives. From India, demand-responsive pricing strategies are analyzed alongside storage co-optimization to improve renewable integration and system management. From Honduras, a pioneering approach incorporates territorial justice into long-term energy planning, demonstrating how expansion scenarios can protect indigenous territories and conservation areas. From Vietnam, the efficiency-equity trade-offs of alternative electricity pricing schemes-including time-of-use and critical peak pricing-are evaluated for their impacts on consumer welfare and system efficiency. A comparative study across Chile, Colombia, and Vietnam examines demand response implementation potential and regulatory frameworks across different institutional contexts. Finally, a synthesis paper integrates findings through a macroeconomic and labor market lens, connecting electricity sector transitions to economy-wide impacts on employment, capital flows, fiscal dynamics, and regional development-dimensions often absent from energy-sector modeling.
Together, these papers demonstrate that equitable power sector transitions in the Global South require planning frameworks that go beyond least-cost optimization to account for territorial, distributional, and labor market dimensions of justice. The session offers actionable insights for policymakers, regulators, and international climate finance institutions.

The Global South faces a dual imperative: expanding energy access while decarbonizing power systems under tight fiscal constraints. Yet most electricity transition modeling focuses on OECD contexts, overlooking equity dimensions central to just transition frameworks in developing economies. This paper synthesizes coordinated research from the Multi-Country Electricity Transition (MCET) Network, examining clean energy pathways across countries in Asia and Latin America through a just transition lens.


Using the open-source SWITCH electricity planning model, five coordinated studies explore technology optimization, demand flexibility mechanisms, and equity dimensions of power sector transitions in India, Honduras, Vietnam, Chile, and Colombia. We organize findings around three interconnected pillars: technology pathways, flexibility mechanisms, and justice dimensions. Our synthesis reveals that demand response and storage co-optimization can substantially reduce transition costs, but access to these benefits is unequally distributed across income groups and requires regulatory reform. Territorial justice constraints demonstrate that infrastructure siting decisions can either reinforce or remediate historical inequities. Comparative analysis across countries shows transition costs vary dramatically by national context, with critical implications for climate finance and burden-sharing frameworks.


Extending beyond energy-sector modeling, we integrate macroeconomic and labor market perspectives often absent from electricity transition analysis. Power sector decarbonization reshapes employment patterns, redirects capital flows, alters government revenues, and redefines regional economic development. Workers in fossil fuel generation and supply chains face displacement, skills gaps, and wage differentials that demand systematic integration into energy system planning. We analyze how carbon pricing interacts with electricity transitions and how revenue recycling can support just transition programs.


Our analysis demonstrates that equitable power sector transitions require integrated policy frameworks connecting energy planning, labor market policies, social protection, and climate finance-moving beyond least-cost optimization to account for workers, communities, and entire economies in transformation.

India's rapid addition of variable renewable energy toward 500 GW of non-fossil capacity by 2030 creates growing mismatches between daytime solar supply and evening demand peaks. Traditionally met with coal or gas peaking plants, these imbalances are expensive, polluting, and misaligned with decarbonization. While battery storage helps, it requires high capital outlays. Demand response (DR) offers a faster-to-scale, lower-cost complement that can defer new capacity, better utilize solar output, and support resource adequacy.
This paper evaluates five DR formulations within the SWITCH electricity planning model for India's 2030 power system: a fixed-demand baseline, an operational flexible loads module, a prototype elastic demand add-on, an endogenous price-responsive total demand formulation using quadratic utility, and an operational DR module with bounded adjustments, energy neutrality, and ramp constraints. The last two formulations represent complementary policy perspectives: the price-responsive approach provides a clean time-of-day tariff signal and integrated welfare metric, while the bounded operational DR provides program-style caps and rules directly actionable for distribution companies.
Results show that both corrected DR formulations consistently shift load into solar-rich hours, reduce the gross peak by 12–14 GW (6–7%), smooth storage cycling, and lower annual system costs by 3–5% relative to the fixed-demand baseline-implying welfare gains of $3–4 billion per year. Storage power extremes decrease substantially, and the state of charge remains clear of hard bounds, confirming reduced cycling stress. Residual unserved energy is minimal.

As Honduras pursues renewable energy targets while confronting climate vulnerabilities, the country faces decisions about balancing energy development with territorial protection. This paper examines the integration of territorial justice into long-term energy planning models for Honduras, analyzing pathways that limit utility-scale renewable energy installations in protected areas and indigenous territories. Using the SWITCH-Honduras capacity expansion model, we evaluate three policy scenarios through 2050: unrestricted development under current law, preservation of protected areas excluding utility-scale generation from five load zones, and a low-carbon scenario achieving 90% emissions reduction while maintaining territorial protections. Our results demonstrate that Honduras can achieve cost-effective power sector expansion while preserving indigenous territories and protected areas, challenging assumptions that territorial protection imposes economic penalties on energy development. The preservation scenario cost differences of less than $0.02/MWh compared to an unrestricted scenario throughout the planning horizon. Both scenarios achieve 83.3% renewable electricity generation by 2050. The low-carbon scenario, which reaches 97.1% renewable generation while respecting territorial constraints, requires 11.9 GW of capacity and achieves system costs of $16.83/MWh by 2050, representing a marginal premium over the $15.66-15.67/MWh achieved by cost-optimized scenarios while delivering annual emissions reductions from 3.8 to 0.33 million tCO₂.

This paper examines the role of demand response (DR) as a strategic flexibility resource in the long-term development and operation of power systems. Using an iterative DR module implemented in the Switch capacity expansion model, the analysis is applied to the power systems of Chile, Colombia, and Vietnam, based on models developed within the MCET network. The study assesses the contribution of DR to long-term system expansion and its implications for investment decisions in generation, storage, and transmission infrastructure through 2050. This time horizon is particularly relevant given the carbon neutrality commitments and climate targets adopted by the three countries. The results indicate that incorporating DR leads to system-wide cost reductions across all countries and scenarios, with total system costs decreasing by up to 35.7% in the Chilean case. In addition, DR consistently increases the share of renewable energy in the generation mix. By unlocking demand-side flexibility and lowering supply-side costs, DR also enables higher levels of electricity consumption, suggesting opportunities for deeper electrification and broader economic development. These findings highlight the potential of DR as a key instrument within decarbonization strategies and underscore the importance of explicitly integrating DR mechanisms into both generation and transmission planning processes.