Energy models for planning and policy assessment

Abstract

The paper reviews energy models which have been applied to planning and policy assessment questions. It describes the history and methods of the early models, which had been developed for industrial purposes in the sixties. It illustrates how the scope of the model development and application changed during the seventies towards more universal applicable models of the total energy system and finally to models encompassing energy-economy interactions. The energy models applied today are mostly very large systems due to the complexity of the problems described. They consist sometimes of an integrated programming system, but in a few cases a set of disconnected models with different techniques are used. A general survey of energy models is given with the purpose to present the broad categories of some of the well-known models in comparative form, discuss their content and application and provide a classification. A selection of three models which are typical representatives for particular categories is reviewed in detail and then follows an outlook for areas of future improvements.