Savanha de Kock

Research Assistant

Savanha is a Research Assistant at the Energy Systems Research Group. She contributes to national and international mitigation efforts through bottom-up techno-economic modelling and policy analysis. Her work focuses on developing and applying the TIMES modelling framework as implemented in SATIMGE to explore energy transitions, assess mitigation strategies, and evaluate policy options to support South Africa’s long-term mitigation commitments.

She is particularly interested in applying modern computing techniques to improve the transparency, responsiveness, and policy relevance of techno-economic models for climate change mitigation in developing country contexts. She is also exploring how spatial data, such as GIS and satellite imagery, could enhance future representations of land-use and resource constraints in integrated modelling frameworks.

She has contributed to projects for WWF (IEP), the Presidential Climate Commission (Net Zero Pathways), and IDDRI (DDP & IMAGINE).

Qualifications:

  • Postgraduate Diploma in Renewable Energy Engineering, Stellenbosch University (2023–2024)
  • BSc (Hons) Astrophysics, University of Cape Town (2022)
  • BSc Physics & Astrophysics, University of Cape Town (2018–2021)

Selected publications:

  • Hatton, L., Johnson, N., Dixon, L., Mosongo, B., De Kock, S., et al. (2024). The Global and National Energy Systems Techno-Economic (GNESTE) database: Cost and performance data for electricity generation and storage technologies. Data in Brief, 55, 110669. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.dib.2024.110669
  • Nosrati-Ghods, N., De Kock, S., Dixon, L., Mosongo, B., et al. (2025). Long-term forecasting: A MAED application for residential water heating in South Africa (2024–2040). Energy Strategy Reviews, 60, 101776. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.esr.2025.101776
  • Policy Brief: Data gaps and challenges for energy systems modelling – Wind Power. Energy Systems Research Group. LinkedIn
  • Policy Brief: Data gaps and challenges for energy systems modelling – Solar Photovoltaics. Energy Systems Research Group. LinkedIn