Electricity at the lowest societal cost: holistic optimization by EMERGE

Thank you for your submission! It's a great addition to the contest.

Dear Sergio, Nice to meet you and thank you for the feedback. The implementation for the renewable energy integration optimization model EMERGE is on track to be completed by December 2016. The model will then be distributed to national energy organizations, universities and other interested groups in countries that are collaborating on the project. EMERGE can then be used to determine how to meet future electricity demand given constraints and sustainability goals at the lowest societal cost. The implementation timeline for each project will depend on the project size, finance availability, political and social barrier. I would be more than happy to collaborate with other proposals. EMERGE has several land use impact categories that could be useful to the "KEYS, Balanced GHG / Sustainable Land Resources, agriculture/livestock/forestry / sustainable energies" proposal as well as other. All the best Daniel

Dear Sergio, Thank you for your comment and support. EMERGE is designed to be run for any electricity grid where data is available. There are different versions depending on whether the electricity system is predominantly hydroelectric, thermal or another mix. Common electricity grid interactions dynamics are included and specific dynamics and constraints can be added to increase precision for a specific grid. EMERGE uses 3 endpoint categories. Human health impacts are mapped to DALYs, environmental impacts are mapped to partially disappeared fraction of species (PDF), and resource depletion is mapped to dollars. This is based on the 2008 ReCiPe LCIA method. In the optimization algorithm, monetary valuation can be applied to DALYs and PDFs to represent all 3 endpoint categories in terms of dollars. A number of optimization techniques could be applied, I am currently implementing a Markov Chain Monte Carlo method. Your municipal adaption strategy to climate change in Costa Rica is very interesting, congratulations on your award last year. I would like to run EMERGE for Costa Rica, could be a good way for us to collaborate. Best, Daniel