openEntrance (open ENergy TRansition ANalyses for a low-Carbon Economy)

openEntrance is a 4-year research and stakeholder engagement program funded by the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation program under grant agreement No. 835896. The openEntrance consortium includes 13 leading research institutions across Europe.

The EU has set the ambition to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to the point of becoming climate neutral by 2050 and prevent the negative and irreversible effects of climate change. This goal includes shifting the energy system to renewable and clean production, as well as technological, behavioural and organisational changes in economy and society. For doing so, the coordination of relevant technologic solutions, policies, funding, and actors, with well-defined targets based on scientific analyses will be required.

In response, openENTRANCE is developing an open-source modelling platform that will:

• Allow carrying out scientific calculations and assessments for different future options of a low-carbon Europe.
• Link and integrate macro-economic and energy system models, and provide economic (e.g. GDP, employment) and human behavioural data (e.g. energy consumption habits) relevant for the energy transition to be used in modelling analyses.
• Support stakeholders to determine macro-economic consequences of the energy transition and identify the best ways to transition to a 'low-carbon' economy.
• Be openly available to use by any interested users, targeting mainly researchers and modellers.

The platform provides a large-scale common database with data about human behaviour which can be used in modelling exercises, as well as downloaded. Open data from EU-wide behavioural experiments and real-life multi-national field-tests of households’ response to flexible electricity tariffs are available for use in the open models. In addition, third party users will also be able to upload own data to conduct analyses with the modelling suite.

Research questions will be formulated in dialogue with policy makers and researchers. New European scenarios for a low-carbon future will be used to analyse the multiple dimensions of the energy transition. These dimensions include, among others, the macro-economic consequences of the transition, demand response, behaviour of communities, sector integration, integration of a large-share of renewables, and resulting need for flexibility and storage.

The common database, hosted by the project partner IIASA, will be openly available to use by any interested stakeholder for at least 10 years after the project’s conclusion.