Mr. Vassilis Stavrakas, Senior Research Associate at the Technoeconomics of Energy Systems laboratory(TEESlab) participated at this year’s Energy Modelling Platform for Europe (EMP-E) Conference (EMP-E 2021) and the Special Session ‘Making Energy Models more relevant for Policymaking’, to present along with SENTINEL colleagues from the Institute for Advanced Sustainability Studies (IASS) and the Renewables Grid Initiative (RGI) their scientific paper “Model-based policymaking or policy-based modelling? How energy models and energy policy interact”, shedding light on the factors that foster or hinder the use of energy system models in policymaking processes.

The key takeaways from the session are ?:
▹ Models can support ambitious policymaking, but energy system models should be just one of the tools in the toolbox, not the only one;
▹ The importance of model transparency ▶️ Co-creative approaches are essential;
▹ Expanding and improving the knowledge exchange to a larger societal audience would establish more trust in the modelling results;
▹ Collaboration and interlinkages between different models could help create institutional inertia for higher policy impacts.

You can read the full article here.