Joint High Level Community Meeting: Fireside Chat – Demand Side Modelling, 17 March 2026, 15:45 - 16:15 (CAT)
As part of the three-day high level community meeting, jointly hosted by the Presidential Climate Commission (PCC), Climate Compatible Growth (CCG), and African Energy Futures (AEF), this fireside chat discussed the challenges of managing demand-side modelling, in the context of economic development and green industrialisation.
Agenda
Event Speakers
Nimrod Zalk
Prof. Nimrod Zalk is Chief Research Officer: Climate and Development at the University of Cape Town’s Nelson Mandela School of Public Governance.
He is also a development economist focused on green industrialisation and development finance in Africa. He has over 20 years’ experience in trade and industrial development research; policy formulation and implementation; and development finance. Until July 2023 he served as Deputy Director-General: Sectors in the South African Department of Trade, Industry and Competition (DTIC) and as non-executive Director of the Industrial Development Corporation (IDC) of South Africa.
He holds an MSc and a PhD in Economics from the University of London’s School of Oriental and African Studies. He has authored a number of policy documents (notably South Africa’s National Industrial Policy Framework); academic publications; and opinion pieces, including on the role of development banks in African green industrialisation. He is co-founder of the annual African Programme on Rethinking Development Economics (APORDE).
Travis Franck
Dr. Franck is the Climate Modeling and Policy Director at the Climate Policy Lab. He develops system dynamics models and tools that focus on the burning questions facing leaders today. Currently he is leading the Raising Ambitions project, which provides capacity building support to develop deep decarbonization pathways for ten fast-emerging economies.
Previous to Fletcher, Dr. Franck led a modeling team at Climate Interactive to develop a series of system dynamics models for decision makers. The C-ROADS model (https://c-roads.org) is a peer-reviewed model useful the UNFCCC COP negotiations and the En-ROADS model (https://en-roads.org) grounds conversations about the green energy transition in rigorous science and data. Additional modeling includes impacts of hurricanes on coastal communities, livelihoods and household resilience in East Africa and Dem. Republic of Congo, and climate-smart agricultural in Morocco and Ethiopia.
He has co-authored papers on modeling and the ability for interactive tools to improve cognitive understanding of climate change policy effectiveness. An interdisciplinary collaboration through SeSYNC/NSF resulted in a Nature Climate Change article about the need to bring “people” into integrated assessment models of climate change and climate policy.
Steve Nicholls
Steve Nicholls is the Director of African Energy Futures (AEF), where is is leading the work to establish a network of African energy research hubs. Steve’s past experience is in connecting climate issues with economic impact and building the strategic case for integrating climate considerations into economic planning, strategy, risk management, investment planning, policy development and implementation. Before joining AEF, he led the mitigation team at South Africa’s Presidential Climate Commission (PCC). Prior to joining the PCC, Steve led the Environment and Society programme at the National Business Initiative. In this role, he ran the programmes that harnessed the collective effort of South African business across the areas of Energy, Climate Change, and Water. Steve has worked in the consulting industry in the United Kingdom and South Africa and has worked on projects in Europe and Southern and East Africa. He has worked across several sectors including Mining, Telecoms, Government, Electrical Energy, Oil and Gas, Financial Services and Retail.
Event Details
- Format: In-Person
- Date: 17 March 2026
- Time: 15:45 - 16:15 (CAT)
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