Developing a national decarbonisation strategy requires significant investment, not least from donors paying consultants to undertake analysis and provide advice. In order for this investment to be effective and of genuine use, it is essential that the strategy uses real data relevant to each individual country.
Starter Data Kits provide the perfect starting point for users to analyse their country’s transport and energy systems. You can use these free kits to further verify the data quality and refine datasets with supplementary inputs as needed.
Key features of the Starter Data Kits include:
Model-ready: Each data kit is specifically tailored to meet the data requirements of its corresponding tool, facilitating quicker adoption and use
Automated: Data is updated automatically on a quarterly basis, ensuring the latest information is always available
Transparent: Comprehensive documentation is provided, including references, methodologies, and metadata for all data
The data included in the SDKs are sourced from the World Bank, International Energy Agency, Asian Development Bank, International Road Federation, among others. This can’t replace using your own country-specific data, but the kits can be used to start conversations between countries and support organisations.
After this, and when you have the data from your specific country, including input from all your relevant stakeholders, your analysis can be quickly updated and applied. This makes it easier to set clear quantified policy targets and underpin loan applications for clean energy infrastructure projects and other work. The kits can be incorporated into fast policy analysis, and longer-term academic processes.
The Starter Data Kits currently cover all countries in mainland Africa, as well as countries across Asia, Oceania, and South America. Use the map below by clicking on a coloured country to get links to datakits and preprints, or use the searchable table below.
LATEST UPDATE – As of July 2026, we have several updated Starter Data Kits (SDKs) for you to try with data from the World Bank, the International Energy Agency, and others.
The SDKs are model-specific, with each dataset tailored to a particular modelling tool, and they are designed as a foundation that enables you to quickly build an initial model and explore scenarios. Additionally, you are encouraged to update and refine the default values with higher-quality data as it becomes available. By reducing the time spent on data collection and preprocessing, the SDKs help accelerate model development while promoting transparency and reproducibility of energy planning analyses.
The latest generation of the SDKs represents an improvement over earlier versions. In addition to expanding data coverage, they provide explicit source attribution for every dataset, improving transparency and traceability, and incorporate geospatial datasets to support spatially explicit analyses and workflows.
WE CURRENTLY PROVIDE SKDs FOR SIX MODELS: CLEWs, OnSSET, OnStove, NISMOD, MAED and OSeMOSYS. FIND THEM ALL here.