Mitigation and adaptation: the LEAP tool for assessing water-energy trade-offs

Submitted by Michael Rastall | published 4th Sep 2012 | last updated 22nd Dec 2020

Climate Adaptation Training Annotation

Level: Introductory
Time commitment: 1.5 hour
Learning product: Summary of tool
Sector: water, energy
Language: English
Certificate available: No

Introduction

LEAP, the Low Emissions Analysis Platform, is a powerful, versatile software system for integrated energy, greenhouse gas (GHG) mitigation and air pollution abatement planning. Water-energy trade-offs are rapidly gaining attention around the world, and recent versions of LEAP make it possible to explore these issues with powerful modeling tools. To achieve this, LEAP has been closely integrated with SEI’s water planning software, WEAP, which has also been upgraded to link to LEAP.

2020 upgrade of LEAP

A new release of SEI’s LEAP system, used by thousands of organizations in more than 190 countries, includes multiple performance enhancements, new features, and close integration with SEI’s Water Evaluation and Planning (WEAP) system.

“Understanding energy and water connections is critical to the success of any efforts to expand energy access, increase renewable energy production, and address climate change”
Dr. Charles Heaps, LEAP developer and senior scientist at SEI's U.S. Centre

“Understanding energy and water connections is critical to the success of any efforts to expand energy access, increase renewable energy production, and address climate change”, says Dr. Charles Heaps, developer of LEAP and a senior scientist at SEI’s U.S. Center. “Integration with WEAP makes LEAP considerably more powerful; we hope our users will take advantage of these important new capabilities" (Charles Heaps)

Who is LEAP for?

LEAP is used by:

Government Agencies
Academics
Non-governmental Organizations
Consultants
Utility Companies

LEAP is becoming the de facto standard for countries undertaking GHG mitigation assessments and creating Low Emission Development Strategies (LEDs).

For example, LEAP is being used by Mexico to update its climate change mitigation plans, and countries such as Argentina, Ethiopia, Jamaica, Saint Lucia, South Korea, Lebanon and Pakistan have used it to help prepare their National Communications on Climate Change to the United Nations. LEAP is also an important tool in the EU-UNDP Low Emission Capacity Building Programme, and SEI used it to help build global climate and energy scenarios to 2050 for a major assessment presented at Rio+20.