The Institute of Marine Science hosted the first managers meeting of MEDEAS project (Guiding European Policy toward a low-carbon economy. Modelling Energy system Development under Environmental And Socioeconomic constraints). This Project involves universities, research centres, energy agencies, sustainability research groups and NGO from 8 different European countries (England, Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Spain, Greece, Italy and Check Republic)
The Institute of Marine Science hosted the first managers meeting of MEDEAS project (Guiding European Policy toward a low-carbon economy. Modelling Energy system Development under Environmental And Socioeconomic constraints). This Project involves universities, research centres, energy agencies, sustainability research groups and NGO from 8 different European countries (England, Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Spain, Greece, Italy and Check Republic)
The aim of this project, managed from the ICM-CSIC, is to develop a new model to reliably describe energetic, economic, social and environmental interactions inside Europe, and from Europe with the whole world. “This model, that will be open and free, will help citizens, enterprises and administrations in the planning of an energetic transition towards a new socio-economic model environmentally friendly and based on renewable energies” explains Jordi Solé Ollé, researcher from the ICM and project’s PI.
MEDEAS team met in Barcelona to discuss the challenges and needs of the model and to analyse the first results related to data collection. In this first stage, different professionals from the academic world, policy agents, and members of NGOs are forming a committee to support model energetic policy-makers.
The model
The model that MEDEAS propose will be available to everyone interested: it will be an open access freeware simulation tool, designed in the accessible programming language Python, providing the possibility to be modified and improved by their users.
The project takes as reference WoLiM (World Limits Model), an energy-economy-environment model that considers natural resources limitation, regarding fossil fuels as well as access to essential minerals depending on global economy development. “We want it to be a useful tool to plan the so necessary energy transition, and to make it flexible to any user needs, we are thinking about a modular design, applied to different economic sectors and spatial scales” comments Antonio Turiel, ICM team member in MEDEAS project and author of the blog The Oil Crash. Precisely in this blog, he has been doing for years a dissemination effort to communicate the environmental and resource limitations societal problems.
Regarding the dissemination of the product and its use, a Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) will be offered to teach its main applications and possibilities.
MEDEAS is a project funded by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme and will last 48 months with a budget of 3.7M€