Energy conversion/Data uncertainties limitations

Component is implemented in:

TIMER model (version TIMER 3.2) Aggregated component: Energy supply and demand Components: Emissions Energy conversion Energy demand Energy supply

Related IMAGE components

Climate policy Drivers Land-use allocation

Projects/Applications

ADVANCE project Energy Modelling Forum - EMF Roads from Rio+20 (2012) project

Models/Databases

Enerdata Global Energy & CO2 Data weggooien IEA database WEC-Uranium

Key publications

De Boer and Van Vuuren, 2017 Hendriks et al., 2004a Hoogwijk et al., 2007

References

DEA, 2018 De Boer and Van Vuuren, 2017 Hendriks et al., 2004b IEA, 2019 IEA, 2021 IRENA, 2016 IRENA, 2020 IRENA, 2022 Luderer et al., 2017 MIT, 2003 Pietzcker et al., 2017 S&P, 2017 Schoots et al., 2008 Van Ruijven et al., 2007 WEC, 2010

Flowchart Energy conversion. See also the Input/Output Table on the introduction page.

Data, uncertainty and limitations

Data

The data for the model come from a variety of sources, the main of which are:

Table: Main data sources for the TIMER energy conversion module

Input	Data source
Electricity production and primary inputs	IEA Statistics and Data
Capacity of different plant types per region	Energy Statistics and Data (Enerdata Global Energy & CO2 Data; IEA Statistics and Data), IRENA REsource database (2016)
Performance of fossil fuel and bio-energy fired plants	Hendriks et al. (2004a), various sources described in De Boer and Van Vuuren (De Boer and Van Vuuren, 2017)
CCS plants and storage	Hendriks et al. (2004b)
Prices	IEA Statistics and Data
Hydropower potential	Gernaat et al. (2017)
Solar and wind costs	Various sources described in De Boer and Van Vuuren (De Boer and Van Vuuren, 2017), residential rooftop PV (Gernaat et al., 2020), offshore wind (Gernaat et al., 2014), concentrated solar power (Koberle et al., 2015), onshore wind and central solar PV (Hoogwijk, 2004)
Nuclear power - technology and resources	WEC-Uranium (WEC, 2010; MIT, 2003)
Hydrogen technologies	Van Ruijven et al., 2007

Uncertainties

The two main uncertainties are calculation of future energy conversion relating to development rates of the conversion technologies, and the consequences for the electricity system of a high level of market penetration of renewable energy. TIMER electric power generation submodule has been tested for different levels of market penetration of renewable energy (De Boer and Van Vuuren, 2017; Pietzcker et al., 2017; Luderer et al., 2017). The model was shown to reproduce the behaviour of more detailed models that describe electricity system developments.

Limitations

The model describes long-term trends in the energy system, which implies that the focus is on aggregated factors that may determine future energy demand and supply. However in energy conversion, many short-term dynamics can be critical for the system, such as system reliability and ability to respond to demand fluctuations. These processes can only be represented in an aggregated global model in terms of meta-formulations, which implies that some of the integration issues regarding renewable energy are still not addressed. A more detailed discussion on the model limitations can be found in De Boer and Van Vuuren (De Boer and Van Vuuren, 2017).

Another limitation is the formulation of primary fossil-fuel conversions in secondary fuels. TIMER currently does not include a module that explicitly describes these processes.