Abstract
Ireland has significantly increased its climate mitigation ambition, with a recent government commitment to reduce greenhouse-gases by an average of 7 % per year in the period to 2030 and a “net-zero” target for 2050, underpinned by a series of five-year carbon budgets. Energy systems optimisation modelling (ESOM) is a widely-used tool to inform pathways to address long-term energy challenges. This article describes a new ESOM developed to inform Ireland's energy system decarbonisation challenge. The TIMES-Ireland Model (TIM) is an optimisation model of the Irish energy system, which calculates the cost-optimal fuel and technology mix to meet future energy service demands in the transport, buildings, industry and agriculture sectors, while respecting constraints in greenhouse-gas emissions, primary energy resources and feasible deployment rates. TIM is developed to take into account Ireland's unique energy system context, including a very high potential for offshore wind energy and the challenge of integrating this on a relatively isolated grid, a very ambitious decarbonisation target in the period to 2030, the policy need to inform five-year carbon budgets to meet policy targets, and the challenge of decarbonising heat in the context of low building stock thermal efficiency and high reliance on fossil fuels. To that end, model features of note include “future proofing” with flexible temporal and spatial definitions, with a possible hourly time resolution, unit commitment and capacity expansion features in power sector, residential and passenger transport underpinned by detailed bottom-up sectoral models, cross-model harmonisation and soft-linking with demand and macro models. The paper also outlines a priority list of future model developments to better meet the challenge of deeply decarbonising energy supply and demand, taking into account equity, cost-effectiveness and technical feasibility. To support transparency and openness in decision-making, TIM is available to download under a Creative Commons licence.
Highlights
Ireland faces very significant challenges in meeting greater energy needs in the future with a much lower carbon footprint. 20 Ireland has a high per-capita carbon footprint relative to the European average and will fail its 2020 decarbonisation objective as set by the European Union (EU) (DCCAE, 2019)
Technology-specific discount rates are typically used in Energy systems optimisation modelling (ESOM) to capture investment decisionmaking from the individual user or industry perspective, to capture market imperfections, limited finance and behavioural heuristics which limit the uptake of novel or capital-intensive investments, even when they are cost-optimal
TIMES-Ireland Model (TIM) derives macroeconomic drivers coupled to the output variables of I3E, enabling scenario variants based on alternative monetary, fiscal and macroeconomic futures, as well as rapid energy system outlook updates aligned with the update cycle of the macroeconomic 205 outlooks from the Economic and Social Research Institute (ESRI)
Summary
Ireland faces very significant challenges in meeting greater energy needs in the future with a much lower carbon footprint. 20 Ireland has a high per-capita carbon footprint relative to the European average and will fail its 2020 decarbonisation objective as set by the European Union (EU) (DCCAE, 2019). A very high share of GHG emissions (34% in 2018 (Duffy et al, 2019)1) in Ireland arise in the agricultural sector, which is a large and export-led part of the economy, dominated by beef and dairy production, with an emissions profile which is considered more difficult to abate than energy sectors Slower mitigation in this sector will require energy to decarbonise faster. Other energy system models in Ireland which are used to inform long-term pathways include the LEAP-Ireland model (Mac Uidhir et al, 2020; Rogan et al, 2014), based on a simulation approach, which is being co-developed with TIM to 60 take advantages of data harmonisation and complementary of policy insights. Appendix A includes additional techno-economic assumptions for future technologies
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