India Energy Modeling Forum

Recently, in the joint working group meeting of the Sustainable Growth Pillar, an India Energy Modeling Forum(IEMF) was launched.

In March, 2019, the NITI Aayog and the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) organized the first workshop on development of the IEMF.
It has been envisaged as a pan-stakeholder platform for debating ideas, scenario-planning & discussing the India's energy future.
Sustainable Growth Pillar is an important pillar of India–US Strategic Energy Partnership co-chaired by NITI Aayog and USAID.
The SG pillar entails energy data management, energy modelling and collaboration on low carbon technologies as three key activities.

Aim

Provide a platform to examine important energy and environmental related issues;
Inform decision-making process to the Indian government;
Improve cooperation between modelling teams, government, and knowledge partners, funders;
Facilitate exchange of ideas, ensure production of high-quality studies;
Identify knowledge gaps at different levels and across different areas;
Build capacity of Indian institutions.

Composition

The forum would include knowledge partners, data agencies and concerned government ministries.

Coordination

NITI Aayog will initially coordinate the activities of the forum and finalizing its governing structure.

Significance

Energy modelling can play an important role in decision-making.
It particularly laid focus on bridging the rural-urban divide and factoring in energy pressures from the informal economy within models.

Energy Modelling Forum (EMF)

It was established at Stanford University (US) in 1976 to bring together leading experts and decisionmakers from government, industry, universities, and other research organizations to study important energy and environmental issues.
It seeks to improve the use of energy and environmental policy models for making important corporate and government decisions.

Guiding Goals: Three major goals guide this effort:

Harness the collective capabilities of multiple models to improve the understanding of important energy and associated environmental problems,
Explain the strengths and limitations of competing approaches to the problem, and
Provide guidance for future research efforts.

Energy modeling is a pre-construction, whole-building assessment of energy efficiency that uses computer programs for calculations.
A model of the entire building is created on a com That model is then run through computer simulations to show energy performance, usually for an entire year based on meteorological information.
Energy modeling accounts for all systems within a building and examines how they impact each other.
For instance, while a certain lighting system may be extremely bright, it may release excessive heat that the building’s cooling system must offset in the summer months.

Building Owners: Energy modeling helps them maximize investment before construction.
Building Occupants: Energy modeling helps keep tenants comfortable throughout the year, while also cutting down on their energy bill costs.
Engineers: Energy modeling allows engineers to see important data all in one place, without referring to dozens of enormous, unwieldy spreadsheets.
Manufacturers: Those who create construction materials love energy modeling because it allows them to showcase their products’ energy efficiency and long-term cost savings prior to construction.
Environment: Buildings hog a large portion of our energy expenditure. If every new building was optimized for energy efficiency with energy modeling, we could significantly cut our energy usage and carbon footprint.