Il progetto

The European strategy for a prosperous, modern, competitive and climate-neutral economy by 2050 imposes to its member States an urgent energy transition. In consideration of the multifaceted nature of the effects of such an energy transition, it is crucial to evaluate this process as comprehensively as possible, formulating feasible and sustainable policies at national level. To reach this objective, a set of innovative interconnected instruments is required, able to quantitatively assess the technological feasibility of the transition process and its implications and feedbacks in terms of economic, social and environmental sustainability. The proposed project “Multi-sectoral Integrated Modeling platform for planning national energy transition pathways (MIMO)” strives to respond to this need by developing a novel set of integrated modeling tools, able to quantify the impact of energy transition pathways and to support policy decisions to ensure short and long-term sustainability of such pathways. The project integrates and complements state-of-the-art engineering and economic approaches into a unified and coherent framework. Compared to the existing integrated modeling approaches, the proposed framework allows to determine feasible technology transition pathways required to comply with future policy targets, while at the same time properly considering feedbacks and interactions among the energy and the socio-economic systems, overlooked by currently available modeling frameworks. Examples of these may concern the change in energy demand induced by fiscal policies or by structural changes in income distribution. A linking approach among the set of adopted models is conceptualized and implemented. Specifically, the energy system model defines technically feasible, least-cost energy technology mix required to satisfy a given energy demand. Such technology mix is then provided as input to micro- and macro-economic models, which in turn determine the energy demand by households and by all the national industries, returning this to the energy model for closing the loop. Specifically, the microsimulation model focuses on the household sector, by integrating demographic, financial and social variables and by estimating the household final demand of several goods, including energy, and exchanges these results with energy and macro-economic models. A multisectoral approach characterizes both the Stock Flow Consistent and the SAM-based Dynamic CGE models that are part of the platform. Specifically, the former model is defined for investigating long-run structural effects of alternative transition paths, while the latter is designed for short-run policy impact assessment. This sophisticated modeling framework provides a step forward in integrated assessment modeling, as well as a sound support to Central policy makers in selecting the most effective policy measures to support the energy transition process

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Le attività di divulgazione