Harmonising Energy Models and Data to Aid Decisions on Net Zero Transition

About this Event

The School of Engineering at the University of Edinburgh is planning a half-day workshop in partnership with The Alan Turing Institute to examine issues around the application of models and data in decision-making to aid the transition to net zero. They welcome a broad range of participants, and no prior energy modelling knowledge is required.

Energy models can aid a range of decision makers, but it is often unclear what data or models can be used when informing these decisions. Meanwhile, energy modellers often limit the decisions they can advise on by relying on models and data with a narrow focus. This workshop aims to explore how data and models can aid decision makers, and how harmonising different energy models can extend their influence on these decisions.

This half-day workshop will begin with a short presentation session on the key issues and motivation for further work in this area. The second part of the workshop will feature a short series of questions that examine the issue of eliciting the right evidence from models and data. The overall theme which motivates these discussions is to improve linkages between:

• the questions being asked by decision makers,
• the evidence required to make a decision on such questions, and
• the source of this evidence – i.e. data and/or models.

The programme for the half-day workshop is as follows:

• 09:20 - Registration
• 09:30 - Welcome
• 09:40 - Presentation 1 - Prof Chris Dent, University of Edinburgh
• 09:55 - Presentation 2 - Dr Kevin Wilson, Newcastle University
• 10:10 - Presentation 3 - TBC, University of Edinburgh
• 10:25 - Questions
• 10:40 - Break (Tea and Coffee)
• 10:55 - Workshop Introduction
• 11:00 - Group Activity 1 - Finding linkages: from questions, to evidence, to source. Participants will be able to envisage any composition of models and data to answer policy questions (including models/data which may not yet exist), and to make graphical linkages to decision-making evidence.
• 11:30 - Group Activity 2 - Assembling evidence from models and data. We want to facilitate discussions about methods and pitfalls of compiling evidence for decision-making, with a specific focus on qualitative aspects.
• 12:15 - Workshop Outputs – Group summaries and all-group discussion
• 12:45 (close) - Lunch

This workshop has been organised by Dr Wei Sun, Dr Andrew Lyden and Dr Peter McCallum at the School of Engineering, University of Edinburgh.