The workshop will bring together key individuals and institutions to shed light on the capabilities and limitations of existing models in the Kingdom. New oil price environment and a new policy agenda to reform, diversify and grow the Saudi economy have emphasized the need to utilize available modeling capabilities in the Kingdom. Different modeling groups have been operating to assess the impact of alternative policies on the economy. Each model has strengths and weaknesses so that a strategy of using multiple models where economists and modelers share knowledge and data would potentially provide the greatest insights for the kingdom. Furthermore, due to the cost and complexity associated with building and maintaining models, it is essential to maintain close cooperation between policymakers, economists, and modelers. The goal of this workshop is to leverage their different perspectives, discuss emerging policy questions and potential modeling gaps, and build relationships that last beyond the workshop.

Recognising the great challenge of large-scale development and deployment of CO2 enhanced oil recovery (EOR) and the associated benefits for energy security and the environment, this two-day joint IEA-KAPSARC interdisciplinary workshop will bring together leading experts and key stakeholders to discuss key dimensions of the CO2-EOR challenge including techno-economics, environmental benefits, carbon markets and CO2 supply price formation, and policy incentives. The workshop will help inform upcoming KAPSARC and IEA research and analysis on how to develop large-scale CO2 storage-focused EOR projects.

The workshop series “The Future of Mobility” provides a forum for discussing key sustainability issues in transportation and current policy strategies to address them. In particular, much emphasis is placed on the adoption of fuel-efficient and alternative-fuel vehicles for road transportation, innovation in fuel and vehicle technology mixes and the shift from road to other modes of transportation.

This is the fifth in a series of workshops aimed to inform research into strategies that may be deployed by both oil importers and exporters through the transition to a low carbon energy mix. Previous workshops have been held in collaboration with the International Energy Forum (IEF) and the Clingendael International Energy Programme (CIEP) in Riyadh and The Hague.

A research-focused workshop co-sponsored by our partner organization in Russia, the Energy Centre at SKOLKOVO, Moscow School of Management, with senior participants from Russian and Saudi government entities, research centers, academia, and industry. The workshop will compare and contrast the experiences of these resource-rich countries, based on recent and ongoing research related to economic and energy transformations for each. Saudi Arabia and Russia are working to best utilize their energy endowment for economic development and are thus in a process of dramatic reform to continue success into the future. The event will exchange lessons learned and experiences in a roundtable discussion.

This is a KTAB Users' Group Meeting that will bring together experienced and new users of KTAB to discuss the modeling approach, software architecture, new directions, and real world, policy-relevant applications. The participants will include a mixture of academics, applied researchers, analysts, and government officials.

KTAB is a software platform that simulates collective decision-making processes (CDMPs). The policy-making process, and indeed most decision making processes, are the result of formal and informal negotiations that attempt to build consensus. KTAB provides a methodology to systematically examine these processes, and provide insight into how a decision is likely to be achieved. The event intends to merge the discussion of how to model practical questions using KTAB with the logic of how a CDMP simulation works.

There is a growing body of science behind resiliency in urban areas, with a focus on the economic benefits of investing in preparedness. Recent studies on resiliency highlight the values of assessing the systems of a city before a disaster so as to identify areas of weakness and evaluate the costs and benefits of taking steps to ensure resiliency. Energy access is the keystone to every resiliency and disaster response plan, but is often overlooked during contingency planning. This workshop will include the following topics of discussion: the science of resilency; research work plan on resiliency in Saudi Arabia for 2018-2020 that can best fit the needs of Saudi stakeholders, starting with energy systems and other critical systems of a city; brainstorming on KAPSARC’s study plan for 2018-2020 in order to best support development of an integrated national strategy for Saudi Arabia regarding resiliency and contingency planning; and a demonstration and training on the Spatially Explicit Resiliency-Vulnerability (SERV) Model, prototyped for the Saudi Arabian context.

With rapidly growing electricity consumption in the region, the development of an integrated electricity market has the potential to offer a multitude of benefits to the participating countries. However, to realize these potential benefits, understanding and addressing a wider set of economic and political challenges is required. This workshop will focus on exploring the policy, legislative, regulatory and system operation dimensions of developing an integrated electricity market and cross-border electricity trade in the GCC and MENA context.

China’s ongoing transition to a “new normal” more sustainable economic development has significant implications for its energy demand and fuel mix and provides an opportunity for executing reforms in the energy sector. Current and proposed policy initiatives on the sectoral, national and international levels will affect not only China’s demand for specific fuels and energy sources, but also its trade and investment patterns, thus, impacting the global markets and creating opportunities and challenges for energy exporting partners such as Saudi Arabia.

The objective of the workshop is to identify potential impacts that existing and future policy initiatives can have on China’s energy demand and international energy cooperation. We will examine: (a) China’s macroeconomic and industrial policy outlook; (b) Sectoral and fuel-specific policy developments; (c) Future dynamics of China’s energy imports; and (d) Sino-Saudi energy cooperation opportunities within the Belt and Road Initiative framework and beyond.

Saudi Arabia’s economy is passing through a phase of transformation in which some resources will be freed from existing usages and allocated to new development opportunities. Making decisions based on the wrong opportunity costs or value of these resources could lead to over- or under-investment in projects. In particular, the international oil price may not reflect the true value of oil for Saudi Arabia due to its position as a major oil exporter and the distortions existing in its domestic economy.

This workshop is co-organized by KAPSARC and the Center for Energy Studies at Rice University’s Baker Institute for Public Policy. It offers an interactive session that provides insights into how distortions impact opportunity cost of oil, and to identify existing practices and ways of estimating opportunity costs/shadow prices.

The following topics will be discussed: (a) Does the standard approach of determining opportunity costs (i.e., valuing a traded resource at border price) apply to Saudi Arabia?; (b) What could be the market and economic drivers of the opportunity cost of oil?; and (c) Are there different possible perspectives?

This workshop is co-organized by KAPSARC and the Energy Information Administration (EIA) of the United States. The objective of the workshop is to discuss the future of oil and gas in the global context and compare and contrast modeling techniques developed mainly in KAPSARC and the EIA, in addition to paving the way for additional collaboration between the two organizations. We will examine: (a) current perspectives on global oil supply and demand equilibrium; (b) global LNG outlook and regional new LNG developments; (c) the economics of modeling oil demand; and (d) the changing energy mix in the United States and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia in a global context.

The goal of the workshop is to discuss the political challenges and opportunities for extending and implementing the Paris Agreement. As we approach the first opportunity for the submission of enhanced nationally determined contributions (NDCs) to reach the goals set out by the Paris Agreement, a combination of domestic political challenges, as well geopolitical pressures and constraints, will impact the decision-making process of signatory countries.
The workshop will be structured as a moderated round-table discussion, with brief presentations in each session to provoke discussion among a group of respected experts. Discussions will focus on the domestic decision-making processes, and the politics of implementation, for each of the top five emitters: China, the United States, the European Union, India, and Russia. The objective is to consider how domestic and geopolitical pressures may hinder iterative enhancement of efforts under the Paris Agreement.
As part of the workshop, KAPSARC will present initial results from a research project that applies the KAPSARC Toolkit for Behavioral Analysis (KTAB) to the domestic political situation regarding the enhancement and implementation of NDCs for each of the top five emitters, as well as a worldwide geopolitical focus.

This workshop is part of our Electricity Sector Transitions series which focuses on the transformation of the electricity distribution sector.

A combination of market liberalization, decarbonization policies and the rapid development and deployment of transformational technologies is fundamentally changing electricity sectors in many countries. This raises new challenges for the operation, development, and governance of power systems and markets. In particular, this transition is testing the limits of the existing market, business, and regulatory models. Distribution is at the forefront of this change and there is an urgent need to develop adequate policies, as well as regulatory and structural reforms, that enable distribution businesses to adapt quickly enough to continue to provide affordable and reliable electricity services as the transition progresses.

The workshop will focus on four key areas:

(1) The evolving role of distribution businesses: Value-adding or platform for service?; (2) Distributed systems: Implications for network pricing and regulation of distribution services; (3) Customer choice: Preconditions for customer empowerment; and (4) Retails markets: Implications for market design, structure, and regulation

Natural gas has been playing an increasingly important role in Saudi Arabia’s energy mix. While developments are underway to ramp up domestic natural gas production, supplementing domestic supply with liquefied natural gas (LNG) imports is increasingly becoming a viable option for the Kingdom. This exclusive and collaborative roundtable workshop will discuss the opportunities and challenges of importing LNG into Saudi Arabia and discuss the policy drivers and market configurations to facilitate this outcome.

The workshop will cover: (1) An overview of global LNG markets and supply prospects; (2) Lessons learned from other LNG importers in the GCC and neighboring countries; (3) Views of potential gas consumers in the Kingdom regarding LNG imports; and (4) The potential value of summer demand to a market dominated by winter demand.

Machine-readable energy economics data is feedstock for modelers to arrive at their insights - it’s hard to find high-quality granular data to drive economic models. KAPSARC found that around one third of the data needed for economic models and research are in non-machine readable formats. Though the value of data has significantly increased, data flow and models management tools need advancement. We will discuss how to advance best practices of data and model management. As researchers with extensive data usage need, we will address the challenges around open data availability, usability and discuss the best way to acquire, manage and feed the models to arrive at valuable insights for policymakers. It’s key that we work together to discuss a future state blueprint of a system that can host base data at granular and aggregate levels that modelers can use to compare, calibrate, crosswalk and integrate models input and output.

This workshop will focus on the energy economics open data availability landscape in the Middle East, India, and China and: (a) examine model- ready energy economics data aligned to advancing research; (b) examine a modelers ecosystem that will aid to develop, operate and maintain models and data; (c) discuss open source tools and methods for delineating data and models; (d) measure and improve data quality through profiling tools, governance and reviews; and (e) examine how partnerships can accelerate delivering reproducible research and outlook comparisons.

The workshop series “The Future of Mobility” provides a forum for discussing key sustainability issues in transportation and current policy strategies to address them. In particular, much emphasis is placed on the adoption of fuel-efficient and alternative-fuel vehicles for road transportation, innovation in fuel and vehicle technology mixes and the shift from road to other modes of transportation.

This second KAPSARC Toolkit for Behavioral Analysis (KTAB) Users’ Group meeting will bring together experienced as well as new users of KTAB to discuss the modeling approach, software architecture, new directions, and real world, policy-relevant applications. The participants will include a mixture of academics, applied researchers, analysts, and government officials. We will discuss both how to use KTAB to address practical, policy-relevant questions and the logic of how a collective decision-making process (CDMP) simulation works.

There is a growing body of science behind resiliency in urban areas, with a focus on adaptation to climate change. One component of resiliency that suggests that policy-makers are well served to assess the systems of a city before a disaster, so as to identify areas of weakness and determine costs and benefits of building resiliency. Energy access is the keystone to every resiliency plan, but is often overlooked during contingency planning. Without energy, communities that have gone through a disaster will struggle to move from a relief to reconstruction phase, will not be able to power homes, hospitals, industry schools, etc. Conducting a holistic energy assessment of a community at a municipal level can serve as a catalyst to larger contingency planning, thus creating harmonized mitigation plans to best meet the needs of a community.

The objectives of this event include:

■ A review of progress on the KAPSARC Energy Resiliency Toolkit.

■ A presentation on a proposed two-year work schedule, with the opportunity to provide feedback from key stakeholders.

■ Knowledge transfer on new methods for evaluating resiliency.