WHY is the next step in improving energy demand modelling to forecast the domestic sector’s energy consumption.
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The WHY Vision
Energy is consumed at household level to use appliances/machines that provide a service to the household members (i.e. heating, lightning, cooling, etc.). In many cases, this is a conscious and voluntary action but in some cases, the service automatically consumes energy to sustain its operation (like the refrigerator). The main objective of the WHY project is to understand what, when, how much and why energy is consumed at households.
In order to mitigate climate change effects, urgent action is required in all sectors of the economy to significantly reduce greenhouse gases emission. Energy System Models (ESM) are tools that help energy analysts, planners and policy makers to rationally describe energy systems and systematically evaluate the impacts of long-term scenarios. The WHY project develops innovative methodologies and a toolkit for short and long-term household energy consumption modelling. Use cases benchmark these models ranging from local to European-wide energy grids. The WHY Toolkit builds on the causality chain to model the energy demand, building on associations between measurable variables.
A series of co-creation workshops invite relevant stakeholders of the field to explore needs, pitfalls, and potential measures on various scales to be considered when developing the WHY project results. Open Days provide insights on how the envisaged innovation can be implemented, while stakeholder engagement workshops aim at determining technical, behavioural and policy components, which should be included in the WHY Use Cases. Are you interested to learn more? Click through our menus to read the latest news or download interesting resources. You can also subscribe to our newsletter, sent out every 6 months or get in touch on social media.
Our results aim at
Policymakers
The WHY Causal Model contributes to improve the understanding of the human decision factors leading to energy demand patterns in the residential sector.
These models will be used to create a set of computer programs that form the WHY Toolkit. The Toolkit will be integrated with leading Energy System Models (ESMs) to develop five use cases that assess different policy scenarios.
Scientific Community
The WHY Causal Model will allow to improve the understanding of the human decision factors leading to energy demand patterns in the residential sector.
The Model will improve the forecasting accuracy of policy intervention impacts. Given the long-term projections needed to assess the emission targets set by the different policies, the Causal Model will allow for long-term evolution of various scenarios.
Energy experts
Traditional energy models are not able to correctly assess the impact that a certain policy might have on the energy demand at residential level.
WHY builds a Causal Model to improve the understanding of human decision processes behind these demand patterns, enabling to accurately forecast how different policies impact the household energy consumption. Five use cases will be used to assess different policy scenarios with special focus on the EU Green Deal and the Renovation Wave policies.