Objectives and problems to be solved:
New challenges related to climate change, depletion of fossil fuels resources and management of nuclear wastes, and the agenda for the development of the technologies necessary to face these challenges, require to consider these issues 50 years or more ahead. Existing long-term energy-environment models lack reliability beyond 25-30 years ahead, increasingly as the time frame expands, although there basic principles (end-use driven, bottom-up, techno-economic) remain valid. The objective is therefore to develop a genuine "very long term energy-environment model" based on these long term energy models principles, but enhanced with two innovative major functionalities: · to describe the futures that fit with a set of overall constraints imposed to the overall system on the very long term (for example: the stabilisation of the concentration of the atmosphere in green-house gases) · to describe and formalise the association of causalities necessary to bring the system from this targeted future back to the present situation, through a " back-casting " approach, in which the concepts to describe energy end-uses and resources have to be redefined. Description of work: The work programme necessary to conceptualise and develop such a "very long term energy-environment model" will be carried out in four phases around which will be organised the four main activities packages: · system analysis, conceptualisation and general specification of the model· formalisation of a first skeleton of the model· programming analysis of the main energy demand and supply new technologies considered· case study: stabilising CO2 concentration of the atmosphere and world plutonium and minor actinides inventory at sustainable levels. The project is implemented by a consortium of 5 partners with extensive experience both in scientific and technological R&D, and in long term socio-economic and energy forecasting and modelling. ENERDATA coordinates the project. Expected results and Exploitation plans: · After six months, the delivery of the new concepts on which the very long term energy-environment model will be developed, and its general specifications· After one year, a first skeleton of the model will be ready, supported with a set of monographs on the specifications and conditions of development of the new technologies considered· After 18 months, the preliminary results on possible technology development strategies up to 2050 likely to fulfil sustainability objectives