Tools - Modelling Systems

TIAM-ECN - Developments in 2009-2010

• Extensive changes have been made to the structure of a number of sectors (e.g. oil, coal and gas production, renewable resources as well as the residential and commercial end-use sectors) in order to simplify the structure of the model in places where it was considered unnecessarily complex. These changes enable us to understand the dynamics and interrelations of the model better, since the most relevant dependencies can now be identified more easily.
• Modeling of emissions has been improved by adding CO2 emissions from deforestation and N2O emissions from agriculture within the explicitly modeled flows. A more complete description of emissions gives the model a wider range of emission sources, and mitigation options, and therefore improves the accuracy of the model concerning the regional and sectorial emission reduction possibilities. This has great relevance also for Europe, since many European long term climate mitigation strategies rely, at least to an extent, on existing emissions trading/CDM potential in the developing world, therefore making the accurate global description of emission sources and sinks quite important.
• Modeling of technology diffusion has been improved both on the level of resource use (i.e. modeling growth, peak and decline for oil and gas production) as well as on the end-use level (i.e. slowly relaxing share limitations for energy carriers on the final end-use level). These changes improve the plausibility of the model results and allow us to make more robust conclusions concerning the temporal patterns of technological change, also in Europe, where many technologies may find their early markets.
• For carbon capture and storage, we have done a review of the technology data and have updated our estimates for storage type specific, regional storage potentials. Since CCS is the focus of much attention in past, ongoing and future projects, it is of utmost importance that the prospects and boundary conditions of this technology are modeled according to the best available information. Accurate regional data enables us to answer more detailed questions concerning the characteristics of CCS diffusion on the regional level, instead of reporting more aggregate and stylistic global results alone.
• Data on the power sector has been reviewed and updated. This sector plays a key role in the energy sector and is the most important sector for early climate change mitigation. Having up-to-date data is therefore essential for retrieving robust results.
• Regional potentials for wind and solar energy have been reviewed and updated. These two renewable sources of energy represent the currently perhaps most successful (wind) and the most promising (solar) sources of carbon free energy and are therefore especially important for the outcomes of the long term scenarios, as well as for any statements concerning the potential future prospects of these technologies.
• The transport sector has been reviewed, and based on this review its structure as well as the data have been updated based on a literature review. Additionally, the data for the H2 production and transport technologies has also been updated. Future tasks include a similar update on the production and distribution of other synthetic fuels that can be used for transport. These changes improve the description of the transport sector greatly, thus allowing us to conduct studies that require detailed results from this sector, while still doing this within the scope of the complete energy system (i.e. we are able to describe the interactions between sectors, show what consequences this might have for fuel prices, mitigation needs, etc). Furthermore, as the first step, we have focused on the the characteristics of the European transport sector, giving us a possibility to create European transport scenario, while still operating within a global system.
• We have used the stochastic version of the model for the project PLANETS. While the analysis of the results and running of the model are more connected to the project work, resources were needed for setting up, and debugging, the stochastic model. Being able to run stochastic scenarios gives us the possibility to focus on issues where uncertainty is one of the key parameters of the study. An example of such a study was demonstrated within the PLANETS project, where the impact of uncertainty in climate targets and CO2 storage availability for long-term climate mitigation was studied.
• Part of the resources in 2010 has been used for developing a model development strategy for the next few years. These discussions are still ongoing, but it is expected that such a strategy can do both, help us direct future acquisition activities, as well as give more general, long term directions for the day-to-day development activities.
• There is an ongoing activity aiming at updating and improving structurally the modeling of bioenergy resources and potentials. If possible, we would like to model the interactions between regional bioenergy, deforestation and reforestation potentials (and activities) in more detail. Since bioenergy, its carbon neutrality and impacts on land-use have been ongoing topics of discussion already for some time, such an improvement in the model would give us a powerful tool to tackle some of the hot topics being discussed within the European energy and climate policy discourse. For example, due to the global scope of our model, we would be able to endogenize the climate consequences of large scale biofuel imports to Europe from the developing world.

Find more information about the TIAM-ECN model on:

• New model developments
• Uses of the model in recent projects (in Dutch)

For more information please contact Bob van der Zwaan.