Advanced bottom-up modelling for national and regional energy planning in response to climate change

This paper describes an advanced bottom-up approach for modelling the energy-environment sector to study greenhouse gas abatement. Three new features are described that give significant new capabilities to this class of models. These are: endogenization of end-use demands, which allows computation of partial equilibria in energy markets; modelling future uncertainties using multi-stage stochastic programming; and combining several bottom-up models as a multi-region model to explore issues of cooperation and burden-sharing. Each of these new features is illustrated by results taken from large-scale extended MARKAL models of Quebec and Ontario. The focus of the paper is on the nature of issues that can be addressed by this methodology; rather than on specific conclusions drawn from the discussed examples. We believe that a very promising avenue of research lies in exploring the role of multiple advanced bottom-up models in the integrated assessment of climate change.