Home > Areas of expertise > Energy and climate change strategies > Developing tools and models

This may include testing the characteristics of new technologies and systems before the production and/or implementation stage, processing large amounts of data in a standardized way (to allow for efficient analyses), providing graphic representation options to increase understanding, or designing tools for easier communication.

At Ecofys we have our own modelling software group, including people with a background in software engineering, strong analytical skills and wide experience of developing tools and models related to sustainable energy and climate change. Our understanding of energy and climate change systems, policies and markets is crucial in understanding our clients’ needs, while our IT, programming and modelling capabilities ensure the seamless implementation of our tools in daily practice.

Our services include:

• Organizing and processing national and company data
• Developing advanced Excel-based tools, including foolproof input sheets and links to central databases
• Developing models, including optimization and simulation models, at a system, organization/corporate, national and global level
• Developing websites, including file exchange facilities for international projects
• Designing visualization tools.

References:

• EVOC – developing a tool to quantify different potential (post-2012) climate change regimes according to various approaches and for various groups of countries – applied within projects for e.g. the governments of Germany, the UK, New Zealand.
• Ecofys Energy Model – a bottom-up highly detailed energy model, designed to evaluate energy and climate change policies at all levels (developed in-house)
• GeoCapacity – developing a model to calculate the costs and CO2 emission reductions associated with connecting multiple sources to multiple sinks using lowest cost path analysis and Monte Carlo analysis – developed with 25 European Geological Institutes and now available as a commercial product
• Our Carbon software family (CarMan™, CarMon™, CarBase™, CarScan™), which is used to manage and monitor emissions or emission reductions – currently used by e.g. Schiphol Airport, Akzo Nobel, the Municipality of The Hague
• Closed greenhouse™ – estimate the heating and cooling demand to avoid building too large an installation, using Trnsys and Fortran architecture
• Developing a tool to determine the potential for SWAC™ (Sea Water Air Conditioning) using raster GIS data (2 x 2 km blocks)
• Designing a Solar irradiance disc to determine the yield loss of PV panels on suboptimally orientated roofs.