In the past few weeks, researchers from the SESAM group of the Department of Energy of the Politecnico di Milano held a course in Rio de Janeiro – at the invitation of Climate Compatible Growth (a UK-funded project that aims to finance sustainable energy and transport projects to meet development priorities in the South of the world), Universidade Federal Fluminense and Universidade Federal de Juiz de Fora – aimed at energy professionals, economists and civil engineers, focusing on energy modelling tools.

In particular, quantitative impact assessment methods were explored using MARIO (Multifunctional Analysis of Regions through Input-Output), a Python-based open source platform designed and developed within the SESAM research team and available to analysts, planners and policy makers. It consists of quantitative models specifically aimed at assessing prospective environmental and economic impacts resulting from the application of technological or policy interventions at the meso- and macro-level, comprehensively including supply chain effects from a life-cycle perspective.

The course is part of the EMP-LAC 2024 programme, whose main objective is to contribute to the creation of optimised investment cases for the energy transition in the Latin American and Caribbean region, making the best use of existing resources to meet the growing demand for sustainable, inclusive and climate-resilient development pathways.

The EMP-LAC 2024 programme is part of the Climate Compatible Growth (CCG) project, led by the Centre for Sustainable Transitions: Energy, Environment and Resilience (STEER) at Loughborough University (UK), which supports developing countries in the Global South in attracting crucial financing for the development of clean energy infrastructure.