1. Home
  2. Current Affairs
  3. Current News
  4. India Energy Modeling Forum

India Energy Modeling Forum

  • 17 Jul 2020

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

Background

  • 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.

About IEMF

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

  • 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.

Beneficiaries

  • 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.