Energy Modeling Forum

Last updated
Energy Modeling Forum
AbbreviationEMF
Formation1976(44 years ago) (1976)
Founded at Stanford University, California, USA
PurposeScientific cooperation
Official language
English
Director
John Weyant
Website emf.stanford.edu

The Energy Modeling Forum (EMF) is a structured forum for discussing important issues in energy and the environment. The EMF was established in 1976 at Stanford University. The EMF works through a series of ad hoc working groups, each focussing on a particular corporate or policy decision. The EMF provides a non-partisan platform that ensures objective consideration of opposing views. Participation is by invitation.

Contents

Since the late-1990s, the EMF has made contributions to the economics of climate change, as witnessed in the reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and on integrated assessment modeling more generally.

John Weyant is the current director of the EMF.

Ethos

The EMF was convened in 1976 over concerns that the insights that large-scale energy models could provide policymakers were being overshadowed by the "plethora of detailed quantitative results" being disseminated and discussed. [1] :449 As a result, the EMF sought to bring energy modelers together to provide a proper context for their work. Indeed, the EMF was "formed to foster better communication between the builders and users of energy models in energy planning and policy analysis". [1] :449 The EMF periodically establishes ad hoc working groups to conduct studies on selected energy topics. A working group then identifies relevant existing models and sets a series of tests to illuminate the basic structure and behavior of each model. Results are compared and the strengths and weaknesses of each model is documented in a (as of 1982) freely available report. [1]

List of EMF projects

Reports for most of the completed projects are available from the EMF website. [2] Reports since 2006 have sometimes been published exclusively in special editions of (paywalled) academic journals instead.

EMF projects [2]
ProjectReportedDescription
Completed projects
EMF011977Energy and the economy
EMF021978Coal in transition: 1980–2000
EMF031979Electric load forecasting: probing the issue with models
EMF041980Aggregate elasticity of energy demand
EMF051982US oil and gas supply
EMF061981World oil
EMF071986Macroeconomic impacts of energy shocks
EMF081987Industrial energy demand, conservation, and interfuel substitution
EMF091989North American natural gas markets
EMF101991Electricity markets and planning
EMF111992International oil supplies and demands
EMF121993Controlling global carbon emissions: costs and policy options
EMF131996Markets for energy efficiency
EMF14Integrated assessment of climate change
EMF151998A competitive electricity industry
EMF161999The costs of the Kyoto Protocol
EMF17Prices and emissions in a restructured electricity market
EMF18International trade dimensions of climate policies
EMF192002Climate change: technology strategies and international trade
EMF202003Natural gas, fuel diversity, and North American energy markets
EMF212008Multi-gas mitigation and climate change
EMF222010Climate change control scenarios
EMF232009World natural gas markets and trade
EMF242014US technology and climate policy strategies
EMF252011Energy efficiency and climate change mitigation
EMF262013Emissions and market implications of new natural gas supplies
EMF272014Global technology and climate policy strategies
EMF282013The effects of technology choices on EU climate policy
EMF292012The role of border carbon adjustment in unilateral climate policy
Current projects (as of late-2016)
EMF30Short-lived climate forcers and air quality
EMF31North American natural gas markets in transition
EMF32US GHG and revenue recycling scenarios
EMF33Bio-energy and land use
  • The reported year is that of the last revision.
  • A dash indicates that no report is available.

See also

Related Research Articles

Historically there have been differences among investigators regarding the definition of organizational culture. Edgar H. Schein, a leading researcher in this field, defined "organizational culture" as comprising a number of features, including a shared "pattern of basic assumptions" which group members have acquired over time as they learn to successfully cope with internal and external organizationally relevant problems. Elliott Jaques first introduced the concept of culture in the organizational context in his 1951 book The Changing Culture of a Factory. The book was a published report of "a case study of developments in the social life of one industrial community between April, 1948 and November 1950". The "case" involved a publicly-held British company engaged principally in the manufacture, sale, and servicing of metal bearings. The study concerned itself with the description, analysis, and development of corporate group behaviours.

Paris Club

The Paris Club is a group of officials from major creditor countries whose role is to find co-ordinated and sustainable solutions to the payment difficulties experienced by debtor countries. As debtor countries undertake reforms to stabilize and restore their macroeconomic and financial situation, Paris Club creditors provide an appropriate debt treatment.

Politics of climate change

The complex politics of global warming results from numerous cofactors arising from the global economy's dependence on carbon dioxide emitting fossil fuels; and because greenhouse gases such as CO
2
, methane and N
2
O
cause global warming.

  1. Implications to all aspects of a nation-state's economy: The vast majority of the world economy relies on energy sources or manufacturing techniques that release greenhouse gases at almost every stage of production, transportation, storage, delivery & disposal while a consensus of the world's scientists attribute global warming to the release of CO
    2
    and other greenhouse gases. This intimate linkage between global warming and economic vitality implicates almost every aspect of a nation-state's economy;
  2. Industrialization of the developing world: As developing nations industrialize their energy needs increase and since conventional energy sources produce CO
    2
    , the CO
    2
    emissions of developing countries are beginning to rise at a time when the scientific community, global governance institutions and advocacy groups are telling the world that CO
    2
    emissions should be decreasing.
  3. Metric selection (transparency) and perceived responsibility / ability to respond: Among the countries of the world, disagreements exist over which greenhouse gas emission metrics should be used like total emissions per year, per capita emissions per year, CO2 emissions only, deforestation emissions, livestock emissions or even total historical emissions. Historically, the release of CO
    2
    has not been even among all nation-states, and nation-states have challenges with determining who should restrict emissions and at what point of their industrial development they should be subject to such commitments;
  4. Vulnerable developing countries and developed country legacy emissions: Some developing nations blame the developed world for having created the global warming crisis because it was the developed countries that emitted most of the CO
    2
    over the twentieth century and vulnerable countries perceive that it should be the developed countries that should pay to fix the problem;
  5. Consensus-driven global governance models: The global governance institutions that evolved during the 20th century are all consensus driven deliberative forums where agreement is difficult to achieve and even when agreement is achieved it is almost impossible to enforce;
  6. Well organized and funded special-interest lobbying bodies: Special interest lobbying by well organized groups, such as the fossil fuels lobby, distort and amplify aspects of the challenge.
World Nuclear Association

The World Nuclear Association is the international organization that promotes nuclear power and supports the companies that comprise the global nuclear industry. Its members come from all parts of the nuclear fuel cycle, including uranium mining, uranium conversion, uranium enrichment, nuclear fuel fabrication, plant manufacture, transport, and the disposition of used nuclear fuel as well as electricity generation itself.

The Minerals, Metals & Materials Society

The Minerals, Metals & Materials Society (TMS) is a professional organization for materials scientists and engineers that encompasses the entire range of materials and engineering, from minerals processing and primary metals production to basic research and the advanced applications of materials.

Inter-American Dialogue

The Inter-American Dialogue is a U.S.-based think tank in the field of international affairs primarily related to the Western Hemisphere. Headquartered in Washington, D.C it intends to "foster democratic governance, prosperity, and social equity in Latin America and the Caribbean". The Dialogue's research areas focus on the rule of law, education, migration, remittances, energy, climate change and extractive industries.

After the 2007 United Nations Climate Change Conference held on the island of Bali in Indonesia in December 2007, the participating nations adopted the Bali Road Map as a two-year process working towards finalizing a binding agreement at the 2009 United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen, Denmark. The conference encompassed meetings of several bodies, including the 13th Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and the third Meeting of the Parties to the Kyoto Protocol.

Integrated assessment modelling (IAM) or integrated modelling (IM)  is a term used for a type of scientific modelling that tries to link main features of society and economy with the biosphere and atmosphere into one modelling framework. The goal of integrated assessment modelling is to accommodate informed policy-making, usually in the context of climate change though also in other areas of human and social development. While the detail and extent of integrated disciplines varies strongly per model, all climatic integrated assessment modelling includes economic processes as well as processes producing greenhouse gases. Other integrated assessment models also integrate other aspects of human development such as education, health, infrastructure, and governance.

John P. Weyant is a research professor of management science and engineering at Stanford University. He obtained his PhD from UC Berkeley in management science in 1976 and has been at Stanford since 1977. His research is focused on climate change, energy security, corporate strategy analysis, and energy policy in Japan.

Mark Z. Jacobson

Mark Zachary Jacobson is a professor of civil and environmental engineering at Stanford University and director of its Atmosphere/Energy Program. Jacobson has developed computer models to study the effects of fossil fuel and biomass burning on air pollution, weather, and climate.

2010 United Nations Climate Change Conference

The 2010 United Nations Climate Change Conference was held in Cancún, Mexico, from 29 November to 10 December 2010. The conference is officially referred to as the 16th session of the Conference of the Parties (COP 16) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and the 6th session of the Conference of the Parties serving as the meeting of the Parties (CMP 6) to the Kyoto Protocol. In addition, the two permanent subsidiary bodies of the UNFCCC — the Subsidiary Body for Scientific and Technological Advice (SBSTA) and the Subsidiary Body for Implementation (SBI) — held their 33rd sessions. The 2009 United Nations Climate Change Conference extended the mandates of the two temporary subsidiary bodies, the Ad Hoc Working Group on Further Commitments for Annex I Parties under the Kyoto Protocol (AWG-KP) and the Ad Hoc Working Group on Long-term Cooperative Action under the Convention (AWG-LCA), and they met as well.

Carbon fee and dividend

A carbon fee and dividend or climate income is a system to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and address global warming. The system imposes a carbon tax on the sale of fossil fuels, and then distributes the revenue of this tax over the entire population as a monthly income or regular payment.

The United Nations Guidelines for Consumer Protection (UNGCP) relate to consumer protection goals. The statement supplied is that the guidelines are "a valuable set of principles for setting out the main characteristics of effective consumer protection legislation, enforcement institutions and redress systems and for assisting interested Member States in formulating and enforcing domestic and regional laws, rules and regulations that are suitable to their own economic and social and environmental circumstances, as well as promoting international enforcement cooperation among Member States and encouraging the sharing of experiences in consumer protection."

Bali Process

The Bali Process is an official international forum, established in 2002, to facilitate discussion and information sharing about issues relating to people smuggling, human trafficking, and related transnational crime and appropriate responses to these issues.

2012 United Nations Climate Change Conference

The 2012 United Nations Climate Change Conference was the 18th yearly session of the Conference of the Parties (COP) to the 1992 United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and the 8th session of the Meeting of the Parties (CMP) to the 1997 Kyoto Protocol. The conference took place from Monday 26 November to Saturday 8 December 2012, at the Qatar National Convention Centre in Doha.

Citizens' Climate Lobby (CCL) is an international grassroots environmental group that trains and supports volunteers to build relationships with their elected representatives in order to influence climate policy. The CCL is a registered 501(c)(4) with approximately $680,000 in revenue in the United States in 2018. Operating since 2007, the goal of CCL is to build political support across party lines to put a price on carbon, specifically a revenue neutral carbon fee and dividend (CF&D) at the national level. CCL is supported by notable climate scientists James Hansen, Katharine Hayhoe, and Daniel Kammen. CCL's advisory board also includes former Secretary of State George P. Shultz, former US Representative Bob Inglis, actor Don Cheadle, and RESULTS founder Sam Daley-Harris.

The Deep Decarbonization Pathways Project (DDPP) is a global consortium formed in October 2013 which researches methods to limit the rise of global temperature due to global warming to 2 °C or less. The focus of the DDPP is on sustainable energy systems, other sectors of the economy, such as agriculture and land-use, are not directly considered.

2016 United Nations Climate Change Conference

The 2016 United Nations Climate Change Conference was an international meeting of political leaders and activists to discuss environmental issues. It was held in Marrakech, Morocco, on 7–18 November 2016. The conference incorporated the twenty-second Conference of the Parties (COP22), the twelfth meeting of the parties to the Kyoto Protocol (CMP12), and the first meeting of the parties to the Paris Agreement (CMA1). The purpose of the conference was to discuss and implement plans about combatting climate change and to "[demonstrate] to the world that the implementation of the Paris Agreement is underway". Participants work together to come up with global solutions to climate change.

Energy modeling or energy system modeling is the process of building computer models of energy systems in order to analyze them. Such models often employ scenario analysis to investigate different assumptions about the technical and economic conditions at play. Outputs may include the system feasibility, greenhouse gas emissions, cumulative financial costs, natural resource use, and energy efficiency of the system under investigation. A wide range of techniques are employed, ranging from broadly economic to broadly engineering. Mathematical optimization is often used to determine the least-cost in some sense. Models can be international, regional, national, municipal, or stand-alone in scope. Governments maintain national energy models for energy policy development.

United Nations Major Group for Children and Youth

Established in 1992, the United Nations Major Group for Children and Youth is the United Nations General Assembly mandated, official, formal and self-organised space for children and youth to contribute to and engage in certain intergovernmental and allied policy processes at the United Nations.

References

  1. 1 2 3 Huntington, Hillard G; Weyant, John P; Sweeney, James L (1 January 1982). "Modeling for insights, not numbers: the experiences of the Energy Modeling Forum" (PDF). Omega: The International Journal of Management Science. 10 (5): 449–462. doi:10.1016/0305-0483(82)90002-0. ISSN   0305-0483 . Retrieved 2016-10-22.
  2. 1 2 "Projects — Energy Modeling Forum". Energy Modeling Forum (EMF). Stanford, CA, USA. Retrieved 2016-10-23.