The Energy Modeling Forum (EMF) is a structured forum for discussing important issues in energy and the environment. The EMF was established in 1976 at
Stanford University
Stanford University, officially Leland Stanford Junior University, is a private research university in Stanford, California. The campus occupies , among the largest in the United States, and enrolls over 17,000 students. Stanford is conside ...
. The EMF works through a series of ad hoc working groups, each focussing on a particular corporate or policy decision. The EMF provides a non-partisan platform that ensures objective consideration of opposing views. Participation is by invitation.
Since the late-1990s, the EMF has made contributions to the
economics of climate change
The economics of climate change concerns the economic aspects of climate change; this can inform policies that governments might consider in response. A number of factors make this and the politics of climate change a difficult problem: it is a l ...
, as witnessed in the reports of the
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is an intergovernmental body of the United Nations. Its job is to advance scientific knowledge about climate change caused by human activities. The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) ...
(IPCC) and on
integrated assessment modeling more generally.
John Weyant
John P. Weyant (born July 23, 1947) is a research professor of management science and engineering at Stanford University. He obtained his PhD from UC Berkeley in management science in 1976 and has been at Stanford since 1977. His research is focus ...
is the current director of the EMF.
Ethos
The EMF was convened in 1976 over concerns that the insights that large-scale
energy models could provide
policymaker
Policy is a deliberate system of guidelines to guide decisions and achieve rational outcomes. A policy is a statement of intent and is implemented as a procedure or protocol. Policies are generally adopted by a governance body within an org ...
s were being overshadowed by the "plethora of detailed quantitative results" being disseminated and discussed.
As a result, the EMF sought to bring energy modelers together to provide a proper context for their work. Indeed, the EMF was "formed to foster better communication between the builders and users of energy models in energy planning and policy analysis".
[
] The EMF periodically establishes working groups to conduct studies on selected energy topics. A working group then identifies relevant existing models and sets a series of tests to illuminate the basic structure and behavior of each model. Results are compared and the strengths and weaknesses of each model is documented in a (as of 1982) freely available report.
List of EMF projects
Reports for most of the completed projects are available from the EMF website.
[
] Reports since 2006 have sometimes been published exclusively in special editions of (paywalled) academic journals instead.
See also
*
Open Energy Modelling Initiative
The Open Energy Modelling Initiative (openmod) is a grassroots community of energy system modellers from universities and research institutes across Europe and elsewhere. The initiative promotes the use of open-source software and open data ...
– an open source energy modeling initiative centered on Europe
References
External links
EMF home page
{{Energy modeling
Economics societies
Energy models
Energy organizations