The essential role of uncertainty and limited foresight in energy modelling Version 1

When making techno-economic simulations to evaluate new climate mitigation technologies, a main challenge is to include uncertainty. The added level of complexity often causes uncertainties to be simplified or ignored in calculations, and not addressed in final public communications. This leads to inaccurate policy and investment decisions because probability is an essential aspect of assessing future scenarios. One specific source of uncertainty is the limitation of information available about the future, which is an aspect of everyday life, but simulation-wise a complex issue. It is however essential, because it is inherently tied to understanding semi-optimal decision making. Quite fundamentally, this pleads for stepping away from rather theoretical (partly) deterministic systems, and moving towards realistic limited foresight modelling techniques, such as offered by integrated Monte Carlo calculations.

Peer Review

Made public on Apr, 25th 2017 under Creative Commons 4.0 Attribution License Reviewed and discussed at http://www.sjscience.org/article?id=598