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UK TIMES is an energy system model of the UK that has been developed by UCL and the UK Department of Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy. It is based on the TIMES model generator, similar to TIAM-UCL and ETM-UCL. It was used to inform the UK Government's Clean Growth Strategy in 2017.
UK TIMES is the successor to the UK MARKAL model. During development, the entire design of UK MARKAL was reviewed and revised. UKTM offers a number of new features:
- Sectors are realigned according to research and policy questions. To enable different scenario baselines to be examined, taxes, policies and hurdle rates are added to the base model using separate modules.
- The model baseline is calibrated to DUKES and NAEI data for 2010.
- UK TIMES includes emissions of all of the major greenhouse gases from energy and non-energy uses for the first time. New technologies are available to reduce emissions from outside of the energy system.
The results from MARKAL and TIMES models are absolutely reliant on the generation of internally consistent scenarios. In reality, consistency is seldom achieved as different high level drivers are used to derive different demands. UK TIMES provides an easier way to compare input assumptions and resulting outputs.
Model summary
| Type: | Bottom-up, technology-rich cost optimisation |
| Purpose: | Decarbonisation pathways, technology assessment |
| Policy impact: | None |
| Spatial scale: | UK single region |
| Temporal scale: | 4 seasons, 4 intraday (day, evening peak, late evening, night) |
| Main contact: | Oliver Broad |
| Other contacts: | Paul Dodds |
Documentation
An overview of UK TIMES is available. The full documentation will appear here when it is published.
Publications
None.