African governments are pursuing ambitious renewable energy integration reforms. However, the policy framework to catalyze this new investment is being held back by the potential for any regulatory/tax reforms to trigger financial liabilities under legacy privately developed thermal power project agreements. To date, there has not been a comprehensive analysis of these legacy liabilities or options for mitigation. The research proposed under this grant would partner with a leading pan-African legal advisory institution to build a database of legacy project agreements collected from African governments, use natural-language search to identify common legal terms that could result in liability if decarbonization policies are issued, and conduct preliminary legal analysis on mitigation strategies for African governments to use as they seek to build-out market frameworks for renewable energy that do not run afoul of obligations under legacy thermal energy contracts.
Researchers
Nicole Kearse
