International energy scenario analysis

International energy scenario analysis

The international community faces a set of energy-related threats. Among the most pressing is the challenge of providing energy services to support economic and social development in today’s less-developed countries, while ameliorating the environmental effects of energy use (including climate change); improving the security of the energy supply; and promoting the necessary investment in energy infrastructure. Managing this in a sustainable way will require profound changes to the global energy system, including the development and deployment of new technologies. Exploring the potential role of such technological change is essential for understanding potential transition pathways and supporting policy development.

Historically, the Energy Economics group at PSI has made important contributions to the development of global energy-systems and integrated assessment tools—namely the Global Multi-regional MARKAL (GMM) model and the MERGE model—for analysing scenarios for the future development of global energy system, particularly in the context of analysing technological change and learning (Barreto and Kypreos 2002; Kypreos et al. 2000; Manne and Barreto 2004; Magne et al. 2010). These tools have been applied by PSI in various EU-sponsored projects (e.g., ADAM, SAPIENTIA, CASCADE-MINTS) and in industry collaborations (e.g., AGS Hydrogen, Volkswagen). Currently, the Energy Economics group pursues three main activities: 1) continuing development of modelling tools focussed on technological change in the energy sector; 2) maintaining expertise in integrated assessment modelling; and 3) expanding technology representation across modelling tools. 

For assessing the interaction of the Swiss energy transition with the energy transition in Europe as implemented by the European Grean Deal, the Energy Economics group has developed an advanced version of the well-established and open-source model JRC EU TIMES which was applied in the research project POLIZERO.