NEWTRENDS
New trends in energy demand modeling
| Start date: | 2020-09-01 |
| Completion date: | 2023-10-31 |
| Project status: | finished |
| Topic: | Sustainable Energy |
| Scope of the project - Country: | , , , , |
| Aim of the project: | Identification of new social trends affecting energy consumption and their implementation in energy demand modelling |
About the project
The EU 2050 Long-term Strategy develops scenarios for a climate-neutral EU in 2050 that aim at full deployment of low-carbon technologies or assume increased climate awareness of EU citizens translating into lifestyle changes, consumer choices, and a more circular economy. While these scenarios integrate societal trends, further progress is necessary to enhance the empirical basis for such New Societal Trends and their representation in models. New Societal Trends have potentially a large (increasing or decreasing) impact on energy consumption and might lead to cross-sectoral demand shifts that go beyond extrapolation of presently observed trends (continuous trends) and may speed up when they are embraced by larger parts of the society (disruptive trends). Such trends include in particular: digitalisation of the economy and of private lives, Circular Economy and Low-carbon industry, and Shared Economy, which were the main focus of the present project.
The NEWTRENDS approach relied on several well-established models (bottom-up energy demand and macro-models), which have all been used extensively in the European context for projections up to 2050 and beyond (EU28 and individual Member States) and which are run by experienced teams of modellers which have been cooperating frequently in the past. NEWSTRENDS strengthened these models while working on New Societal Trends.
NEWTRENDS had the following detailed objectives:
- we identified and quantified how such New Societal Trends affect energy demand (its structure and patterns, including cross-sectoral interdependencies).
- we investigated how energy demand models are to be improved to represent such New Societal Trends. We improved representation in energy demand models policies that can influence such trends in the light of the Energy Efficiency First (EE1) Principle brought forward in the EU policy framework.
- we integrated into energy demand models recent empirical findings on the impacts of such New Societal Trends as well as information from detailed data sources such as smart meter data available from recent technical advances, in order to improve the empirical basis for such investigations. Special care was given to uncertainties that are inherent when assessing new societal trends.
NEWTRENDS project has received funding from the European Union`s Horizon2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No. 893311.
