Perceived vs. Real Risks: Implications for the Cost of Capital and Competitiveness of Renewable Energy in Developing Countries
Anta Samb
High financing costs remain a major barrier to renewable energy deployment in developing countries, where capital-intensive projects are particularly sensitive to financing conditions. This project investigates whether sovereign credit ratings overstate country risk by comparing perceived risk with realized default risk. Using empirical country default rates as an alternative measure of risk, it quantifies how replacing the country risk premium implied by sovereign ratings with one calibrated from observed default rates would affect the cost of capital, project valuation, and the competitiveness of renewable energy investments, while identifying potential sources of bias in risk assessment.
Supervisor 1: Luke Hatton, Department of Chemical Engineering
Supervisor 2: Dr. Gbemi Oluleye, Grantham Institute - Climate Change and the Environment
Assessing the Employment Impacts of the Energy Transition in Peru
Emily Lam
This project explores how Peru’s electricity transition could reshape employment across different decarbonisation pathways. Using an OSeMOSYS-based energy system model, it links changes in electricity generation, capacity expansion and emissions with technology-specific employment factors. The study compares NDC-based pathways, coal and fossil fuel phase-outs, and a high-renewable scenario. It highlights how the transition can create jobs in hydropower and solar PV, while raising questions about regional impacts and the future of workers linked to fossil fuel generation.
Supervisor 1: Luke Hatton, Department of Chemical Engineering
Supervisor 2: Dr. Gbemi Oluleye, Grantham Institute - Climate Change and the Environment
Can Market-Based Mechanisms Reduce Cost Premiums in Low-Carbon Industrial Goods?
Faiz Akbar Raihananda
This project investigates whether market-based mechanisms (such as carbon tax, ETS, tax credits) can close the "green premium" — cost gap between conventional/ grey and low-carbon products — in four hard-to-abate industrial sectors: cement, steel, ammonia, and methanol. Drawing on plant-level cost data and carbon pricing mechanisms currently in place around the world, the study models the prevailing green premium under different scenarios. Utilizing industry willingness-to-pay surveys, the study then estimates potential market demand by translating green premiums into expected market uptake based on willingness-to-pay distributions.
Supervisor 1: Dr. Gbemi Oluleye, Grantham Institute - Climate Change and the Environment
Supervisor 2: Elsy Milan, Centre for Environmental Policy
Resilient Strategies for Data Centre Expansion in the UK
Linus Grahl
Data centre expansion sits inside a structural tension: operators require uninterrupted power and resilience against their uptime targets, the grid requires that expansion does not compromise system stability, and financiers require priceable risk. Existing resilience frameworks are retrospective and cannot capture cascading, cross domain failures between data centres, the grid, and climate. My thesis applies Robust Decision Making and Exploratory Modelling to the problem, combining a scenario model of grid stress under data centre growth with a stakeholder workshop bringing together operators, regulators, and finance, aiming to identify strategies that enable data centre expansion and its power supply while meeting resilience targets and remaining robust across a wide range of grid, climate, and regulatory futures.
Supervisor: Dr. Mark Workman, Grantham Institute - Climate Change and the Environment
Decomposing GB Non-Domestic Electricity Costs: A Structural Analysis Using the MUKERC Framework
Luke Bennet
GB non-domestic electricity prices are currently the highest in the EU14 plus UK group and remain around 70% above the long-term average preceding the 2021 energy crisis. This project develops a structural decomposition framework that disaggregates the full cost stack, covering wholesale, network, and policy levies, to distinguish cost drivers open to regulatory intervention from those that are not, a distinction largely absent from current policy debate. Drawing on international data as context, the study evaluates operational strategies for non-domestic consumers alongside regulatory options such as levy rebalancing, market transparency, and network cost recovery reform.
Supervisor: Dr. Salvador Acha, Department of Chemical Engineering
Energy Justice in Non-financial Corporate Disclosure
Taegen Kopfler
There is an urgent need for low-carbon, sustainable energy projects, and it is paramount that these projects are developed in a just manner. Energy justice offers a framework to weigh the associated costs, benefits, and procedures of energy services. One way that energy companies are held accountable to international standards of human rights is through disclosure of their environmental, social, and governance (ESG) information. The reporting landscape is crowded and complex, with a variety of international standards driving the quality of ESG reporting. This project assesses how—and to what extent—energy justice principles are actively incorporated into current ESG reporting frameworks, standards, and deliverables.
Supervisor 1: Karen Makuch, Faculty of Natural Sciences, Centre for Environmental Policy
Supervisor 2: Dr. Miriam Aczel, United Nations University