WHY | Climbing the causality ladder to understand and project the energy demand of the residential sector

Summary
In order to mitigate climate change effects, urgent action is required in all sectors of the economy to significantly reduce greenhouse gases (GHG) emission. Energy System Models (ESM) are tools that help energy analysts, planners and policy makers to rationally describe energy systems and systematically evaluate the impacts of long-term scenarios. On the supply side, ESMs have provided useful results, but however, on the demand side, they lack the degree of accuracy required for proper characterization of, among others, the use of energy in households. One of the intrinsic difficulties is that energy demand in the residential sector is influenced by a myriad of factors (like the high diversity of dwellings, socio-economic conditions of the social/family units, and behavioral-related consumption patterns) that cannot easily be accounted for in traditional ESMs.
To overcome this challenge, the novel Causal Modeling will be used to quantitatively analyse human decision making in energy consumption and their reactions to interventions (e.g. policy changes). This will be combined with an innovative FFORMA approach which allows multiple
different load profiles to be categorised by a set of vectors describing it. WHY will therefore create innovative methodologies for short and long term load forecasting. The WHY modeling will allow to directly assess the impact of a multitude of policies on the energy system as well as performing both ex-ante and ex-post assessment over policy measures. WHY will therefore contribute to a holistic understanding of household energy consumption and improved demand modelling.
The WHY toolkit will be used to assess several scenarios simulating different policy measures. Integration with widely-used ESMs (PRIMES, TIMES) will be demonstrated and the results analyzed. All results will be open-sourced to maximize uptake, and be widely disseminated to diverse target audiences (i.e. DSOs, energy companies, policy makers, researchers).
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More information & hyperlinks
Web resources: https://cordis.europa.eu/project/id/891943
Start date: 01-09-2020
End date: 31-01-2024
Total budget - Public funding: 1 999 982,00 Euro - 1 999 982,00 Euro
Cordis data

Original description

In order to mitigate climate change effects, urgent action is required in all sectors of the economy to significantly reduce greenhouse gases (GHG) emission. Energy System Models (ESM) are tools that help energy analysts, planners and policy makers to rationally describe energy systems and systematically evaluate the impacts of long-term scenarios. On the supply side, ESMs have provided useful results, but however, on the demand side, they lack the degree of accuracy required for proper characterization of, among others, the use of energy in households. One of the intrinsic difficulties is that energy demand in the residential sector is influenced by a myriad of factors (like the high diversity of dwellings, socio-economic conditions of the social/family units, and behavioral-related consumption patterns) that cannot easily be accounted for in traditional ESMs.
To overcome this challenge, the novel Causal Modeling will be used to quantitatively analyse human decision making in energy consumption and their reactions to interventions (e.g. policy changes). This will be combined with an innovative FFORMA approach which allows multiple
different load profiles to be categorised by a set of vectors describing it. WHY will therefore create innovative methodologies for short and long term load forecasting. The WHY modeling will allow to directly assess the impact of a multitude of policies on the energy system as well as performing both ex-ante and ex-post assessment over policy measures. WHY will therefore contribute to a holistic understanding of household energy consumption and improved demand modelling.
The WHY toolkit will be used to assess several scenarios simulating different policy measures. Integration with widely-used ESMs (PRIMES, TIMES) will be demonstrated and the results analyzed. All results will be open-sourced to maximize uptake, and be widely disseminated to diverse target audiences (i.e. DSOs, energy companies, policy makers, researchers).

Status

CLOSED

Call topic

LC-SC3-EE-14-2018-2019-2020

Update Date

26-10-2022
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Horizon 2020
H2020-EU.3. SOCIETAL CHALLENGES
H2020-EU.3.3. SOCIETAL CHALLENGES - Secure, clean and efficient energy
H2020-EU.3.3.1. Reducing energy consumption and carbon foorpint by smart and sustainable use
H2020-EU.3.3.1.0. Cross-cutting call topics
H2020-LC-SC3-EE-2018
LC-SC3-EE-14-2018-2019-2020 Socio-economic research conceptualising and modelling energy efficiency and energy demand
H2020-LC-SC3-EE-2019
LC-SC3-EE-14-2018-2019-2020 Socio-economic research conceptualising and modelling energy efficiency and energy demand