TIAM-UCL
TIAM-UCL is a 16-region energy system model maintained and developed under UKERC Phase II by the Energy Systems team based at the ULC Energy Institute.
Full model documentation is now available.
In 2009/2010 TIAM-UCL has been developed with respect to the original ETSAP-TIAM version. The most significant change has been to split out a new United Kingdom region from the previous 'Western Europe' aggregate. Several model characteristics, such as trade patterns and resource endowments, have been updated and the model has been calibrated to the base year 2005. In addition, the drivers of the model, including population, household number, GDP and industrial output, have been revised for the whole model horizon and been calibrated to current data for the model years 2005 and 2010. More updates include the revision of the uranium fuel cycle and biomass production chains, and enabling climate change mitigation policies such as carbon tax and cap-and-trade.
Further development will include enabling endogenous (global) technology learning and activating climate module, which can be used to calculate/limit atmospheric CO2 concentrations and temperature changes due to GHG emissions.
In the future, this model will be used to put the United Kingdom in a global context concerning global accelerated decarbonisation scenarios with a comprehensive investigation of the costs and benefits of the different decarbonisation options. It is expected that TIAM-UCL will be extensively used for UKERC research by Energy System them as well as in collaboration with other research groups in UKERC and for UK government policy scenarios (for DECC and CCC).
Gabrial Anandarajah recently presented a paper on TIAM-UCL at the International Association of Energy Economics 2010 in Rio de Janeiro.
Full model documentation is now available.
In 2009/2010 TIAM-UCL has been developed with respect to the original ETSAP-TIAM version. The most significant change has been to split out a new United Kingdom region from the previous 'Western Europe' aggregate. Several model characteristics, such as trade patterns and resource endowments, have been updated and the model has been calibrated to the base year 2005. In addition, the drivers of the model, including population, household number, GDP and industrial output, have been revised for the whole model horizon and been calibrated to current data for the model years 2005 and 2010. More updates include the revision of the uranium fuel cycle and biomass production chains, and enabling climate change mitigation policies such as carbon tax and cap-and-trade.
Further development will include enabling endogenous (global) technology learning and activating climate module, which can be used to calculate/limit atmospheric CO2 concentrations and temperature changes due to GHG emissions.
In the future, this model will be used to put the United Kingdom in a global context concerning global accelerated decarbonisation scenarios with a comprehensive investigation of the costs and benefits of the different decarbonisation options. It is expected that TIAM-UCL will be extensively used for UKERC research by Energy System them as well as in collaboration with other research groups in UKERC and for UK government policy scenarios (for DECC and CCC).
Gabrial Anandarajah recently presented a paper on TIAM-UCL at the International Association of Energy Economics 2010 in Rio de Janeiro.
Detailed descriptionThe energy system model TIAM-UCL is a regionalised bottom-up model depicting the global energy system in a technology rich manner from primary energy supply over the conversion sector and the final energy sectors to energy service demand.
TIAM-UCL is based on the model generator TIMES (Loulou et al. 2005) maintained by the ETSAP Implementing Agreement of the International Energy Agency and represents a variant of the ETSAP developed ETSAP-TIAM model (Loulou et al. 2008).
TIAM-UCL, which in its standard formulation is a linear programming model, minimises the total discounted energy system costs over the entire model horizon.
In each region, the TIAM-UCL model describes the entire energy system by all essential current and future energy technologies from the primary energy supply over the processing, conversion, transport, distribution of energy carriers to the end-use sectors and the useful energy demand (Figure 1). These demands are linked to exogenous underlying drivers, like population growth or GDP development, via demand elasticities.
ResultsModel results include type and capacity of energy technologies, energy consumption by fuel, energy trade flows between world regions, energy system costs, the long-term prices for the energy carriers as well as the marginal costs of environmental measures. The model covers the time horizon from 2005 to 2100. The model horizon considered in TIAM-UCL is divided into periods of 10 year duration, each being represented by an average year.
Regional disaggregationIn TIAM-UCL the world is currently divided in 16 world regions. Each region contains it own self-contained energy system. Regions are linked through endogenous trade-flows of commodities, such as oil, gas and coal, as well as CO2.
Regional disaggregation of resourcesThe primary energy resources and the petroleum processing sector are further divided in OPEC and non-OPEC sub-regions. The world regions are linked through the trade in crude oil, hard coal, pipeline gas, LNG (liquefied natural gas), petroleum products (diesel, gasoline, naphtha, heavy fuel oil) and emission permits. |
Glossary
Fossil resourcesConventional and unconventional oil and gas reserves and resources in the different regions as well as various enhanced recovery methods are included in the model (oil: extra-heavy oil, oil shale, tar sands; natural gas: coal-bed methane, aquifer gas, tight gas). Conventional oil is again divided into reserves, enhanced oil recovery reserves and yet-to-find resources. All different reserve and resource types of crude oil and natural gas are classified according to the regional structure of TIAM-UCL and divided into cost categories to account for varying supply costs.Renewable energy and synthetic fuelsIn addition, renewable energy sources and their potentials as well as alternative technologies for synthetic fuels (e.g. Coal-to-Liquid, Gas-to-Liquid) and different pathways for the hydrogen production are considered in the supply side of the model.Climate ModuleAn integrated, simplified climate module in TIMES allows the determination of the CO2 concentration changes in the atmosphere and thus the estimation of the induced global temperature changes. In addition to CO2, TIAM also balances the greenhouse gases N2O and CH4. Marginal abatement curves for the process-related emissions of the latter two are implemented, whereas for CO2 capturing at power, synthetic fuel and hydrogen production plants followed by storage in geological formations is being considered.Further ReadingLoulou, R. and M. Labriet (2008). "ETSAP-TIAM: the TIMES integrated assessment model Part I: Model structure." Computational Management Science 5(1): 7-40. |
Figure 1: Structure of the energy sector within a region of TIAM-UCL (back to text)