Print Email Facebook Twitter Future Prospects of the Dutch Energy Transition Title Future Prospects of the Dutch Energy Transition: Analysis of Agents’ Behavior through Energy System Modelling Author Baldisseri, Elisa (TU Delft Technology, Policy and Management) Contributor De Vries, Laurens (mentor) Storm, S.T.H. (mentor) Koelemeijer, Robert (mentor) Degree granting institution Delft University of Technology Programme Management of Technology (MoT) Date 2018-07-13 Abstract The present research takes place at the Environmental Assessment Agency, in the Department of Climate, Air andEnergy. The core objective is to improve the investment module of a national energy system simulation model(Ensysi) that wants to represent actors’ technology-investments in the energy transition context.An initial literature review has revealed the importance of the agents’ rational and non rational behavior in determiningthe future stock evolution, given the high level of uncertainty of some key variables such as future energycarriers prices and ETS prices. With regard to this, Ensysi presents the shortcoming that investment decisions arenot forward looking but just consider the costs and revenues of the year in which the decision takes place. Themodel expansion performed in this research is therefore aimed at re-formulating the investment concept througha discounting calculation so that some exploratory scenarios in terms of actors’ behavior and expectations can bedesigned and analysed.The literature review has covered firstly an overview of energy modeling techniques and categories in order tointroduce Ensysi and categorize it within the existing energy modelling scenario. Secondly, the core object ofthe research was investigated: how investment decisions happen in reality for the actor group of consumers andcompanies. Since Ensysi is not yet provided with a solid theoretical formulation, the main theories for technologyinvestmentdecisions were reviewed in order to find the one appropriate for the theoretical underpinnings of Ensysi.Based on that a conceptual model was formulated, clarifying the nature of the relationships among different variablesand providing a first guide for the subsequent research steps. The formulated conceptual model is based onDiffusion of Innovation theory from Rogers (2003) and some notions from environmental psychology.After the literature review and theoretical validation, a careful analysis of the current module formulation has beendone to reformulate a part of the investment simulation module. More specifically a new parameter connected to anet present value calculation was created to introduce in the model the actors’ perceived time dimension of moneyflows so as to include expectations about future costs.The outputs from the new version were then compared to the ones from the original version to observe whichnew potentialities arise from the model expansion. Two case analysis for different energy subsystems (transportpassenger cars for consumers and electricity generation for companies) were considered to draw research insightsvaluable for energy policy from the new potentiality of the model. The results of these simulations confirm theadded value of defining actor scenarios based on different expectations and long term financial evaluations ratherthan highly uncertain behavioral parameters: more modelling transparency and validation possibilities, as well asrichness of decision-making simulation scope. Subject Energy TransitionSimulation modellingAgents behavior To reference this document use: http://resolver.tudelft.nl/uuid:d294f7ae-245e-4dfc-9157-1352532d7e15 Part of collection Student theses Document type master thesis Rights © 2018 Elisa Baldisseri Files PDF EBaldisseri_MasterThesis.pdf 1.16 MB Close viewer /islandora/object/uuid:d294f7ae-245e-4dfc-9157-1352532d7e15/datastream/OBJ/view