REMES - a regional equilibrium model for Norway with focus on the energy system

Abstract

The RegPol project (Regional effects of energy Policy) studied interrelations between energy systems and the economy to improve the understanding of regional differences, needs and barriers for the move towards a more sustainable energy system. A quantitative framework was developed in the form of a hybrid modelling approach linking detailed energy system models with regional macro-economic models.

Part of the latter, the REMES model represents a multi-regional multi-sectoral Computable General Equilibrium (CGE) model to analyze the impacts of different climate policy measures and the interactions between national and regional energy markets and the overall economy. The incorporation of fuel substitution allows to handle regional issues such as decentralized energy production or transmission needs or to investigate interactions between the local energy system and infrastructure and the broader economy, including labour and housing markets. Moreover, the model is flexible with respect to input structure such as number of regions, industry sectors and commodities and with respect to linking options with other models.

This report discusses the background of the RegPol project, describes the data structure required for the model, documents preprocessing routines to enable a flexible data input and gives a general explanation of the REMES model and its implementation in the MPSGE extension to the GAMS system.