The European Commission DG ENER (Directorate‑General Energy) is currently updating their 2025 aggregate reference scenario used to inform official energy and climate policy development.
This exercise covers energy, buildings, industry, transport, land‑use, and CO2 and non‑CO2 emissions.
The part of the aggregate reference scenario of most interest to energy system modelers is the multi‑sheet E3M_technoecon_Energy.xlsx spreadsheet file that informs the closed‑source PRIMES framework developed by E3 Modelling in Athens.
Today 22 October 2024 the DG ENER held a Workshop on Technology Assumptions with about 40 participants in attendance. Many were representing trade associations, with university researchers, NGOs, and others present too.
The assumptions and parameters adopted during the current consultation will be published in an updated version of the same spreadsheet and also accompanied by documentation.
I asked about the legal context by chat and video at the meeting:
When would it be appropriate to cover the non‑openness of this data being used by the EC for public policy?
The PRIMES spreadsheets are notated “(c) E3-Modelling - Confidential - Not to be used or further disturbed without permission”
Material from the IEA under CC‑BY‑4.0 is apparently included - but no attribution that I could see.
Can the DG ENER commission a legal opinion on the legal context of these spreadsheets, in terms of both license compliance and reusability [by] other modelers?
The response was that the final datasets will be published online under a Creative Commons CC‑BY‑4.0 license. And the accompanying report, I imagine, will also be under the same terms.
I stressed that without CC‑BY‑4.0 licensing, the data will not be useful to this particular community.
And in relation to openness generally, I have been reliably told that in the past even economics ministries in member states could not obtain detailed model results for their regions. Hopefully those days are receding.
Here is my chat question as a screenshot:
