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UCL-Energy leads £5.7 million whole systems energy modelling consortium

30 November 2012

wholeSEM

The UCL Energy Institute will lead a ground breaking £5.7 million whole systems energy modelling consortium (wholeSEM); a new initiative to develop, integrate and apply state of the art energy models. The consortium is led by University College London and consists of Imperial College London, the University of Cambridge and the University of Surrey.

The wholeSEM consortium will make an internationally leading research impact, prioritising on key modelling areas of high relevance to interdisciplinary energy systems. The research will focus on:

1. How does energy demand co-evolve with changes in practice, supply, and policy?

2. How will the endogenous, uncertain, and path dependent process of technological change impact future energy systems?

3. How can the energy supply-demand system be optimised over multiple energy vectors and infrastructures?

4. What are the major future physical and economic interactions and stresses between the energy system and the broader environment?

The consortium, funded by EPSRC under the RCUK Energy Programme, will employ extensive integration mechanisms to link and apply interdisciplinary models to key energy policy problems, with substantive bilateral engagement with stakeholders in academia, government and industry.

Professor Neil Strachan, Professor of Energy Economics and Modelling at the UCL Energy Institute, will lead the consortium. Professor Strachan said: “Energy models provide essential quantitative insights into the 21st Century challenges of decarbonisation, energy security and cost-effective energy supply. The wholeSEM consortium represents a step change in funding to enable the UK to make an internationally leading research impact in this critical area”.

PDF of press release