Exchanging experience on long-term energy scenario comparison

The joint workshop hosted by IRENA and the European Commission's Joint Research Centre, aims to exchange experiences on scenario comparison efforts with experts from a variety of institutions that are using and developing long-term energy scenarios. The workshop will formalise knowledge on the approaches and methods used when comparing long-term energy scenarios to draw robust insights for energy policy making and planning of the clean energy transition, and will provide key messages to be presented to ministers at the upcoming 11th Clean Energy Ministerial in coming June in Chile.

Findings of the LTES campaign have pointed out that while the transparency of scenarios is one of the key issues for creating the trust of results, scenarios are often presented in a black box manner and comparison of results is very difficult. It is understood that the use of use of multiple scenarios from multiple sources has its benefits in the sense that it allows to assess a broad range of results and take account for the inherent biases stemming from scenario developers and modelers. When there is a multitude of scenarios available from different agencies and institutions, inter-comparison studies are necessary to benchmark the assumptions and results of scenarios. At the national, regional and international level, scenario comparison exercises allow to engage with policy makers by providing increased reliability on scenario results and robust messages for planning the evolution of the energy system.

This workshop is part of the Long-term Scenarios for the Energy Transition campaign (LTES) second year of activities, for which IRENA acts as an operating agent under the Clean Energy Ministerial workstreams.