KAPSARC’s released its second Workshop Policy Brief in February 2014, entitled Energy Systems Modeling to Support Policy Making.
TIn October 2013, KAPSARC convened a workshop in Washington, DC attended by some 30 international energy economic modeling and policy experts. Discussions addressed the need to match evolving policy imperatives with new and improved modeling approaches.
We have moved from an era in which concerns about security and sufficiency of supply were the dominant themes (1970s and 1980s), through a swing towards liberalizing markets (1980s and 1990s), to a growing concern about climate change and greenhouse gas emissions (2000s). Perhaps the future will require models that optimize the energy economies of the increasingly important countries, developing under a centralized state capitalism model and administered prices.
As valuable as models are in describing potential scenarios, model outputs are not forecasts so much as descriptions of what would happen if the simplified representation of reality they describe were to play out. There will always be exogenous factors that lead to a difference between “forecasts” and the actual outturn.
The Energy Systems Modeling Workshop Policy Brief can be accessed here