BEC2060 ENERGY SCENARIOS
Project Background
Building on the success of the BEC2050 energy scenarios the BusinessNZ Energy Council (BEC) and public and private partners have commissioned a comprehensive model of New Zealand’s entire energy sector. The TIMES model is being developed by the Paul Scherrer Institute, Switzerland’s largest federally funded research institute, and modeller for the World Energy Council’s scenarios. Auckland University, through the Business School’s Energy Centre, will host and maintain the model to provide insights to those working in academia and research fields. It will also be accessible on commercial terms to those who wish to use it.
The TIMES model generator combines two different, but complementary, systematic approaches to modelling energy: a technical engineering approach and an economic approach. TIMES is a technology rich, bottom-up model generator, which uses linear-programming to produce a least-cost energy system, optimized according to a number of user constraints, over medium to long-term time horizons. In a nutshell, TIMES is used for the exploration of possible energy futures based on contrasted scenarios.
National model applications of the TIMES model focus on energy planning and policy issues, taking into account renewable energy deployments, environment effects and national obligation for emissions reduction. National TIMES models are currently used in countries such as Sweden, Ireland, U.S., U.K., Portugal, China and Norway.
Other applications include estimating CO2 marginal abatement costs, integrating agriculture within an energy systems model to assess GHG reduction, studying the impact of land use change from e.g. biofuels on greenhouse gas emissions, incorporating travel behaviour and travel time into energy systems models and market penetration analysis of specific technologies, such as hydrogen vehicles.