Design and development of a large scale energy model

Abstract

Interest on the sustainability of energy systems has recently increased with the emerging need to mitigate global warming in a global environment experiencing continuous increases in energy demand. Global warming is mainly the product of carbon dioxide (CO2) gases that are emitted to the atmosphere by burning fossil fuels such as coal, oil, and natural gas. In response to reducing the global warming impacts, policy makers and researchers have been giving particular interests on reducing CO2 emissions, securing energy supplies, enabling alternative energy sources, increasing energy efficiency, while striving to maintain stable energy prices at reasonable levels. Energy modeling has been a frequently applied tool in national, regional and global energy planning since the early 70ies. Energy models at the national scale typically mimic the dynamics and relationships of energy demand and supply to provide valuable guidance for policy makers. From this point of view, this thesis study describes a new bottom-up, large-scale energy modeling framework focusing on the mechanisms and relationships that would mimic the energy sector as a whole. The new framework is built as a straight forward, flexible, general purpose, optimization modeling framework. All the complex relationships of producing, transforming, transmitting and supplying energy resources according to the demand mechanisms are represented with a deep technological detail. The new framework is validated by comparing the results of a base scenario with another model developed under a similar energy modeling framework (MARKAL) which is run under the same data set and assumptions. The base run results are also compared with the latest confirmed statistics. Then the model is run under different scenario assumptions, after being calibrated according to the Turkish national energy sector data. Results of the Base scenario are compared with other alternative scenarios. Scenario analysis study is used to analyze the impacts of alternative approaches on energy system dynamics such as energy supplies, emissions, and energy costs.