The medee models for long term energy demand forecasting

Abstract

Energy demand forecasting is increasingly faced with a contradiction. On one hand, it is becoming necessary to forecast energy demand over a longer time horizon to take into account increased construction time for energy production equipment (e.g. nuclear plant) and in line with the increasing need to take into account the social and economic impacts of energy system development when defining energy strategies. On the other hand, the increasing uncertainties in the evolution of energy prices and, particularly, of the economy and its structures together with the increased rapidity of changes in those fields require that time horizons are shortened within which one can reasonably use the traditional tools of energy demand forecasting (and, in particular, econometric models). The fourfold increase in oil prices in late 1973 and the crisis which has affected most of the industrialized countries since then have stressed this contradiction and have reinforced the necessity of defining new approaches in handling the issue of long-term energy demand evolution. The approach presented in this paper is the result of five years research at Institut Économique et Juridique de l'Énergie (IEJE) in Grenoble (France). It is based first upon a comprehensive description, by means of a scenario, of the long term evolution of the socio-economic system, with a particular emphasis on its energy related aspects, and secondly on a simulation model-MEDEE-which permits to evaluate the energy demand associated to the scenario. The first part of this paper is devoted to a general description of the approach and the philosophy behind its development; the second part presents the type of applications that can be envisaged with MEDEE and gives a brief overview of the studies already carried out.