[00:00.000 --> 00:15.280] Okay, my name is Robbie Morrison and I'm here to talk about energy system modelling. [00:15.280 --> 00:19.400] I want to take you right up to the stratosphere. [00:19.400 --> 00:24.520] A couple of things on my background, I won't go through all this, but I started climate [00:24.520 --> 00:27.360] campaigning 33 years ago. [00:27.360 --> 00:38.520] I started high resolution national energy system modelling 23 years ago, and I started [00:38.520 --> 00:44.720] open source energy system modelling 20 years ago, so I was right at the beginning of those [00:44.720 --> 00:48.080] trends pretty much. [00:48.080 --> 00:53.280] I want to talk briefly about the open energy modelling initiative, which started about [00:53.280 --> 01:00.480] eight years ago, and it's an informal collection of modellers. [01:00.480 --> 01:06.560] We now have about 1,000 people involved. [01:06.560 --> 01:12.840] The bulk of them are early stage full time researchers, and that gives you an idea of [01:12.840 --> 01:16.680] how much sort of interest there is in this open side. [01:16.680 --> 01:21.800] There is an entire parallel universe doing clothes modelling that we don't have much [01:21.800 --> 01:27.960] contact with in the power companies, in the World Bank, in the multilateral organisations, [01:27.960 --> 01:32.040] so I'm only going to talk about the open source side. [01:32.040 --> 01:46.120] The final point up here is that this whole field has flipped in the last year radically. [01:46.120 --> 01:53.720] I get contacted by corporations and economists and so forth now, which would never have happened [01:53.720 --> 01:59.840] two years ago, so this is a complete game change. [01:59.840 --> 02:03.560] I'm not going to talk very much about energy system modelling, but if you want an introduction [02:03.560 --> 02:10.200] I recommend this YouTube, which is made with my partner in the car park, and it's descriptive [02:10.200 --> 02:13.200] and it's quite good. [02:13.200 --> 02:17.800] This is a quick schematic showing what these models can capture. [02:17.800 --> 02:22.760] This just happens to be one that I pulled up that's hybrid with agent based modelling [02:22.760 --> 02:30.920] in it, but you see a lot of the entities, if you like, that were being discussed in [02:30.920 --> 02:36.160] the previous talks, but brought together in a collective. [02:36.160 --> 02:41.440] So we have households and we have market operators and we have lines companies and we have markets [02:41.440 --> 02:49.480] and we have AC power flow and we have a lot of kith and the system, hydrosystems, storage, [02:49.480 --> 02:57.080] gas turbine sets and so forth, and a whole lot of external characteristics coming in [02:57.080 --> 03:07.400] through weather conditions, interest rates and so forth, so that's the broad picture. [03:07.400 --> 03:13.600] If you want to look at the models that exist, this Wikipedia page is worthwhile, it's about [03:13.600 --> 03:18.000] half complete and it covers the various models. [03:18.000 --> 03:23.720] Some are directed specifically to the energy sector, but increasingly they're a sector [03:23.720 --> 03:28.640] coupled and they come into the whole energy system. [03:28.640 --> 03:38.440] The basic paradigm is operations research, so the underlying model produces a set of [03:38.440 --> 03:45.200] constraints in a sparse matrix, has a goal function which is normally minimum aggregate [03:45.200 --> 03:53.160] cost and feeds that all into a solver and returns a result. [03:53.160 --> 03:59.320] The way that the analysis proceeds is by so called comparative analysis of scenarios, [03:59.320 --> 04:07.560] so you pick a base scenario, a reference scenario and then you propose different scenarios [04:07.560 --> 04:16.960] that you want to explore with nuclear, without nuclear and so on and so on. [04:16.960 --> 04:22.120] These are the high resolution, they have a lot of detail in them, so they have the plant [04:22.120 --> 04:24.680] and the network and so forth in them. [04:24.680 --> 04:30.240] A lot of external circumstances, weather, demand for energy services and so forth. [04:30.240 --> 04:34.360] They are contiguous time which is really important nowadays because with renewables [04:34.360 --> 04:41.280] and storage you can't kind of do typical periods, you actually have to work your way [04:41.280 --> 04:45.160] through the entire system as it evolves. [04:45.160 --> 04:52.840] The evolution might be out for 30 years, out to 2050. [04:52.840 --> 04:57.960] There's a degree of different types of foresight, sometimes it's perfect foresight so we know [04:57.960 --> 05:07.280] everything about the future, other times it's stepwise so we do recursive dynamics. [05:07.280 --> 05:15.840] What up here, technological progress is included, one factor, multi-factor, for example the [05:15.840 --> 05:23.480] uptake of a particular technology like solar PV will, the model will internally reduce [05:23.480 --> 05:31.120] the costs for that particular technology as it's taken up and it evolves through time. [05:31.120 --> 05:37.680] The optimisation is usually mixed into linear programming, anything else more exotic runs [05:37.680 --> 05:41.040] into performance issues. [05:41.040 --> 05:49.280] Conceptual extensions include embedded decision taking using agency, multi-criteria optimisation, [05:49.280 --> 05:55.720] some assessment of co-benefits such as urban air quality, sensitivity to the framing of [05:55.720 --> 06:04.320] the problem, the role of uncertainty and the exploration of near optimal solutions. [06:04.320 --> 06:10.400] So this is system modelling, all systems have kind of natural systems and problems if you [06:10.400 --> 06:14.760] like together have natural boundaries. [06:14.760 --> 06:21.880] If you want to model Europe or we want to model an energy system in Germany you probably [06:21.880 --> 06:29.520] want to go to the boundaries of Europe for example because that's kind of a natural point. [06:29.520 --> 06:36.800] The methods or naturally seek technical synergies, that's one of the advantages of using these [06:36.800 --> 06:46.320] systems, the least cost approach will pick up the synergies and get them working. [06:46.320 --> 06:52.840] Future climate change is normally included, projected future climate change. [06:52.840 --> 06:59.840] These models may exhibit undue sensitivity to both data quality and to system resolution [06:59.840 --> 07:08.040] so they're not without issues that have to be explored by modellers. [07:08.040 --> 07:16.080] They started off with energy systems, electricity systems coupled into district heating and [07:16.080 --> 07:25.000] into gas and so forth but they're increasingly branching out into land usage, water use, [07:25.000 --> 07:29.640] the industrial sector when you're looking at things like hydrogen, ammonia, thermal [07:29.640 --> 07:32.800] integration and steel production. [07:32.800 --> 07:40.800] Carbon capture is included now outside of the energy system so residual emissions from [07:40.800 --> 07:46.000] cement and from agriculture are now being included in these models. [07:46.000 --> 07:52.360] Comparability also and we've had some talks about vehicle charging but this is to look [07:52.360 --> 07:59.720] at the whole picture and not just the perspective of the householder or even the lines company. [07:59.720 --> 08:04.240] Co-benefits beyond climate change mitigation I mentioned. [08:04.240 --> 08:09.400] What isn't in the models is there is no embedded economy. [08:09.400 --> 08:14.800] If you want to do that then you have to go to process based integrated assessment models [08:14.800 --> 08:24.440] which are widely used by the IPCC and in which case you have a lot more kind of an economic [08:24.440 --> 08:29.160] take on the system. [08:29.160 --> 08:34.840] The model started off being open source but there are good reasons why we want to look [08:34.840 --> 08:43.400] beyond open source and the one, the first reason is to go to open science. [08:43.400 --> 08:50.160] So we want genuinely open data and we want it under communal curation. [08:50.160 --> 08:57.400] We want full transparency and as modelers we want an engaged overarching community so [08:57.400 --> 09:04.600] that we can compare and contribute and support each other. [09:04.600 --> 09:13.640] The goal in my kind of take is that we should be looking at public policy analysis which [09:13.640 --> 09:19.400] is based on peer production, on commons based peer production and the reason I say that [09:19.400 --> 09:25.400] and I think there was a talk earlier this morning from the European Commission, people [09:25.400 --> 09:30.920] like the European Commission do not have the capacity to explore the solution space and [09:30.920 --> 09:37.160] I will add nor do they have the creativity required. [09:37.160 --> 09:40.080] That's not a criticism, that's just an observation. [09:40.080 --> 09:48.160] So we really want a massive effort in exploring what our future could be out to 2050, the [09:48.160 --> 09:54.920] kind of trajectories and pathways and requirements that are needed. [09:54.920 --> 10:00.680] Some potential for public engagement but very few examples to date when these models [10:00.680 --> 10:05.640] are used for more specific projects. [10:05.640 --> 10:12.520] Our biggest Achilles heel is complete and coherent data for public interest analysis. [10:12.520 --> 10:20.760] We are not data scientists, we are desperate to have data which is complete and coherent. [10:20.760 --> 10:23.760] If it's dirty, it's a problem. [10:23.760 --> 10:33.360] If the semantics behind the data collection is somewhat inconsistent, it's a problem. [10:33.360 --> 10:35.360] If the information is missing, it's a problem. [10:35.360 --> 10:41.120] This may not be an issue for data scientists using statistical techniques or machine learning [10:41.120 --> 10:47.160] but it is for us. [10:47.160 --> 10:51.760] One issue that doesn't get much air play are data standards and quite a lot of the data [10:51.760 --> 10:56.240] standards in this area, especially in the electricity sector are proprietary, they come [10:56.240 --> 11:04.200] under so-called brand, we heard about that, fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory conditions. [11:04.200 --> 11:12.760] The problem is if the data standards are legally encumbered, then the code bases that reflect [11:12.760 --> 11:21.000] that and the data sets that comply with it could become derivative works under intellectual [11:21.000 --> 11:23.800] property law and we are in trouble. [11:23.800 --> 11:34.160] So we want basically CC by 4.0 or something similar on the data standards. [11:34.160 --> 11:41.000] I'll skip the last bit on data sets actually and I'll skip the slide but I just want to [11:41.000 --> 11:47.040] point out that the situation in Europe is pretty awful on a number of levels. [11:47.040 --> 11:53.120] You go to the US and you'll find a much friendlier environment for this kind of public interest [11:53.120 --> 11:54.120] information. [11:54.120 --> 12:01.480] Okay, second part of my talk is about the global south and the question is why is someone [12:01.480 --> 12:07.960] who's white, male and old standing here talking about the global south. [12:07.960 --> 12:12.600] My short answer is I'm from Aotearoa, New Zealand and New Zealand became bicultural [12:12.600 --> 12:17.440] all over my lifetime and I saw that process and contributed to it. [12:17.440 --> 12:24.440] I had radio programmes in the early 90s on sustainability and conservation on tribal [12:24.440 --> 12:27.440] radio, on ewe radio and so forth. [12:27.440 --> 12:35.400] I went to land occupations, I organised joint meetings with tribes, Huey they're called [12:35.400 --> 12:37.240] and they take place on Marae. [12:37.240 --> 12:42.960] So that's kind of my back story about why I can talk about this I think. [12:42.960 --> 12:51.240] This is a map of Africa with the high voltage network present and you will see that there [12:51.240 --> 12:54.720] is very little structure there. [12:54.720 --> 13:03.160] South Africa a little more, David is going to talk a little more about this so I won't. [13:03.160 --> 13:09.280] This is another example of a model called osmosis. [13:09.280 --> 13:15.640] This is in Africa and these are the cumulative trades out for the next 30 years. [13:15.640 --> 13:20.520] So this is the kind of thing that the models are starting to look at. [13:20.520 --> 13:27.160] There are two overarching projects in this area, the osmosis global project. [13:27.160 --> 13:32.680] Osmosis is written in a high level mathematical programming language called Mathprog. [13:32.680 --> 13:37.400] The second one is pipes and meets earth which is written in Python and you'll hear a little [13:37.400 --> 13:38.400] bit more about. [13:38.400 --> 13:45.440] One of the interesting things I thought, I looked up software heritage collects the [13:45.440 --> 13:54.960] forks for a particular code base and this is 135 fork repositories for osmosis and 308 [13:54.960 --> 13:58.120] fork repositories for pipes. [13:58.120 --> 14:03.360] So that gives you an idea of how the open source world works when people will fork [14:03.360 --> 14:04.360] the project. [14:04.360 --> 14:10.800] These aren't hostile forks I presume and use them for their own work and hopefully contribute [14:10.800 --> 14:15.240] their contributions back upstream. [14:15.240 --> 14:22.720] This clear activity now in Central America, Costa Rica, South America, countries like [14:22.720 --> 14:30.200] Brazil, India and surrounding regions, South Africa, Sub-Saharan Africa and most of this [14:30.200 --> 14:33.920] is in the context of academic work. [14:33.920 --> 14:40.960] We have no connection or very little connection crossing over with the multilateral development [14:40.960 --> 14:42.520] organisations and so forth. [14:42.520 --> 14:47.480] So this is the parallel universe I mentioned. [14:47.480 --> 14:52.480] How we doing for time? [14:52.480 --> 15:05.480] One of the issues that we face I think is interacting with official agencies because [15:05.480 --> 15:13.480] we are relatively informal and relatively self-directed and we also are a competition [15:13.480 --> 15:20.680] against the agencies like the International Atomic Energy Agency or IRENA or whoever are [15:20.680 --> 15:26.080] doing their own analysis and I quite like this quote from Oliver Getten, every day politics [15:26.080 --> 15:32.120] is therefore dominated not by evidence based policy making but by attempts at policy based [15:32.120 --> 15:37.480] evidence making and that's exactly what we want to avoid. [15:37.480 --> 15:42.240] I talked to the incumbent NGOs about using our kind of analysis and they weren't very [15:42.240 --> 15:46.320] interested but I feel quite encouraged now because there are a new set of foundation [15:46.320 --> 15:51.720] backed think tanks who are actually very keen on this kind of stuff and I'm sorry I can't [15:51.720 --> 15:56.640] mention too many names because I was ill for the two weeks prior to this talk and I didn't [15:56.640 --> 16:04.000] get consent to talk about them but a couple of climate analytics and transition zero. [16:04.000 --> 16:07.480] Some official agencies are starting to talk about open sourcing their stuff but they're [16:07.480 --> 16:15.000] not doing it in a particularly robust way in my opinion and this is a problem. [16:15.000 --> 16:20.560] They will either open wash or they will do what's called throw their code over the wall [16:20.560 --> 16:24.680] which is put it on GitHub but there's no attempt to develop it, there are no issues [16:24.680 --> 16:32.680] listed and whether it even runs is open to question. [16:32.680 --> 16:40.880] In regards working with the global south and as I had about 10 interviews with researchers [16:40.880 --> 16:47.160] in the global south to try and find out what scopes and issues they're unstructured interviews [16:47.160 --> 16:51.080] but it was kind of interesting. [16:51.080 --> 16:59.960] So the clear benefits of open source projects are of course few cost barriers with the caveat [16:59.960 --> 17:04.560] that the commercial solvers can be expensive. [17:04.560 --> 17:14.440] Open license for Garobi might equal three full time researchers in India for example. [17:14.440 --> 17:23.440] There's a soft technology transfer, it's bi-directional, it's lightweight, all the software projects [17:23.440 --> 17:29.040] bundle associated communities and this is I think really a useful part and the work [17:29.040 --> 17:36.160] is transparent, it can be studied and challenged which I think is really important. [17:36.160 --> 17:43.840] There are some cost cultural considerations I think that are necessary to explore and [17:43.840 --> 17:52.480] I talk about this in Aotearoa and New Zealand becoming bicultural but indigenous languages [17:52.480 --> 17:59.880] bundle different concepts and they're quite noticeably different, sovereignty is an issue, [17:59.880 --> 18:08.480] it's really easy to transgress sovereignty without realising it. [18:08.480 --> 18:14.440] There's a question of representation, the projects are all pretty much white and male [18:14.440 --> 18:27.280] and the global north at the moment and the next question really is also a matter to be [18:27.280 --> 18:32.360] traversed is that the framing of the models and the problems from a global north perspective [18:32.360 --> 18:39.960] may not be very appropriate to the circumstances in the global south. [18:39.960 --> 18:49.120] Global slide challenges, just overarching challenges, most of these won't be very surprising, [18:49.120 --> 18:54.360] code maintenance is always a challenge, support for maintainers. [18:54.360 --> 19:00.120] Building a suitable knowledge commons is going to be a real challenge, for instance the international [19:00.120 --> 19:05.520] energy agency only sells its data under non-disclosure, we don't get hold of that although it's collected [19:05.520 --> 19:11.640] from our national governments, the European Union is focused on data commodification through [19:11.640 --> 19:21.440] its single digital market, the scientific institutions are unnecessarily protective, [19:21.440 --> 19:26.800] I talked about cross cultural issues, we need to find new ways of interacting with official [19:26.800 --> 19:33.320] agencies to get any of this information into the policy process and I'll just conclude [19:33.320 --> 19:39.640] with a quotation from an East German playwright, Heinrich Müller, optimism is just a lack [19:39.640 --> 19:56.960] of information, okay that's it, thank you, yeah any questions, can you speak up a little [19:56.960 --> 20:04.680] too if you ask questions, maybe you said the European Union has some issues with open [20:04.680 --> 20:11.560] data, I know that the European Space Agency has really strong footprint on doing all this [20:11.560 --> 20:17.880] or is it Sentinel data, stuff maximum open to drive a new economy, so has this lot to [20:17.880 --> 20:22.840] spread to the other agencies yet, no the ones I'm going to mention and I will mention some [20:22.840 --> 20:35.480] names, the Meridata for climate, future climate is under bespoke license, the YASA data on [20:35.480 --> 20:42.400] scenarios going forward also under a bespoke license and so on, so a lot of the Horizon [20:42.400 --> 20:52.360] 2020 projects are also problematic, the stuff under statute reporting is also legally encumbered, [20:52.360 --> 21:00.440] so I can't for the life of me understand why, but some of it is technically encumbered, [21:00.440 --> 21:09.440] so for example the transparency platform run by ENSOE is legally encumbered, the EEX data [21:09.440 --> 21:19.160] from the European energy exchange also and also technically encumbered, you can't cut [21:19.160 --> 21:26.200] and paste it off the website, it's not very deep protection but and we've complained my [21:26.200 --> 21:31.240] friends to ASA the regulator and they say it's compliant, sorry yeah. [21:31.240 --> 21:56.120] There's the open government license, UK 3.0, I don't know which one they're using, [21:56.120 --> 22:02.640] the other decent experience was with Elexon UK balancing, well I think I'm their only [22:02.640 --> 22:08.840] official licensee but other than that it told me to retract everything, I can use it completely [22:08.840 --> 22:12.360] open which is quite nice, so you know it can sometimes be. [22:12.360 --> 22:16.760] I just want to comment on licensing, the one that, the really the only license that works [22:16.760 --> 22:25.520] is CC by 4.0, if you go to the open government license UK 3.0 you'll find it's not interoperable [22:25.520 --> 22:37.760] with Creative Commons and so you end up with legal data silos, all the licenses are written [22:37.760 --> 22:50.040] by lawyers, I can assure you that and the lawyers all know what they're doing, okay okay okay, [22:50.040 --> 23:04.880] there's a question up there or no, yeah, yeah yeah, Remind went open, that's from Pic, went [23:04.880 --> 23:12.920] to one of the high GPL licenses, I filed a bug report on that because the GPL licenses [23:12.920 --> 23:24.960] have a clause on the, remember when Java was proprietary and you have to have an open [23:24.960 --> 23:31.080] language for a GPL license, they use GAMS which is not an open language and I filed [23:31.080 --> 23:37.080] a bug report and I know that personally the lawyer who responded who said it was okay, [23:37.080 --> 23:43.640] now look I'm not an open source lawyer, I didn't write the textbook but that was where [23:43.640 --> 23:44.640] that discussion went. [23:44.640 --> 23:51.680] Have you seen any new funding come into this particular field to open things up more, because [23:51.680 --> 23:56.600] all I know is that in December I know that the Creative Commons group, they've started, [23:56.600 --> 24:01.160] they've started to hire new roles in this specific role because they landed like a, [24:01.160 --> 24:05.400] you know small millions of Euros grant for this, but beyond that I don't know if there's, [24:05.400 --> 24:09.160] if you know any other groups starting to do stuff in this field. [24:09.160 --> 24:18.920] The overarching, okay, okay, yeah, thank you, oh sorry, the question was funding specifically [24:18.920 --> 24:29.560] for open source and the sort of short answer is, hang on, the short answer is that the [24:29.560 --> 24:34.560] funding, I'm talking about Germany let's say, has been quite good for modelling in general [24:34.560 --> 24:38.920] and it hasn't been specifically directed to open source. [24:38.920 --> 24:43.920] The high level organisation, the Open Energy Modelling Initiative hasn't needed resources [24:43.920 --> 24:51.600] as yet but what will happen going forward I don't know, but the funders are interested [24:51.600 --> 24:58.480] in the kind of open science component of what we do, that's quite clear and I presume that [24:58.480 --> 25:05.440] the next rounds of funding will start looking for real open source projects to be, to be [25:05.440 --> 25:06.440] for support. [25:06.440 --> 25:07.440] Yeah? [25:07.440 --> 25:15.440] So what would you say in all your years of experience has to change and how can we push [25:15.440 --> 25:25.040] for the change so that we get these open data, so what are the levels we have to pull? [25:25.040 --> 25:33.000] In a particular, well, the question was what levers are needed to come to genuinely open [25:33.000 --> 25:39.480] data, it depends on the jurisdiction, in the US it's quite good, federal, work by federal [25:39.480 --> 25:46.760] employees is public domain and there's been enough copyright, legislation around copyright [25:46.760 --> 25:51.000] that most of the stuff isn't actually covered, protected by copyright, they don't have [25:51.000 --> 25:54.120] a database directive. [25:54.120 --> 26:02.920] Working back to Europe, the only solution I can see is CC by 4.0 as a policy, which [26:02.920 --> 26:07.960] is lightweight, doesn't require legislation or change and so forth, but it does require [26:07.960 --> 26:16.520] the European Union to get out of the data commodification and I didn't mention it but [26:16.520 --> 26:20.240] there's a thing called the Data Producers Act which is still live which might come back [26:20.240 --> 26:26.160] into the data act, the proposed data act and that would be a complete travesty for us [26:26.160 --> 26:31.400] because that would mean all this machine generated data would now have its own intellectual [26:31.400 --> 26:36.280] property and I couldn't think of anything worse. [26:36.280 --> 26:51.600] Okay, yep, thank you everyone.