The World Energy Council signs strategic alliance with the Paul Scherrer Institute

Following their successful collaboration on the "Global Transport Scenarios 2050" study, the Paul Scherrer Institute (PSI) and the World Energy Council (WEC) have signed a three year strategic partnership agreement. The contract signed between Dr. Christoph Frei, Secretary General of WEC and Prof. Alexander Wokaun, Vice-Director of PSI, will see Switzerland's world renowned research centre for natural and engineering sciences becoming a Project Partner on future WEC Scenario projects.

 

Speaking at the signing of the contract in Villigen PSI, Switzerland, Christoph Frei said: "This is a win win for our two organisations. WEC will have access to PSI's state of the art energy-economics optimization model to provide quantification results for our scenarios and PSI will have access to our unparalleled network of energy leaders."

 

 

Frei added: "This alliance provides a significant enhancement to WEC's mission to inform global, regional and national energy strategies. WEC and PSI working together will also be able to provide balanced and highly informed scenario projects to governments and governmental organisations seeking impartial analysis supported by transparent governance."

 

 

Alexander Wokaun added: "It is a great opportunity to spread out the multi years' experience in energy economics modelling of the Paul Scherrer Institut, building on the role as honest broker and make the information available in a transparent way to as many stakeholders as possible."

 

 

WEC's Director of Policy and Scenarios, Professor Karl Rose is now leading an expert panel of over 50 internationally renowned practitioners from more than 30 countries (including Project Partner IBM) to produce scenarios covering the entire global energy sector. Karl Rose explains: "Our explorative scenarios provide policymakers with a theoretically deeper insight than is often available to them through the normative approach."

 

 

The result of this two year study will build on the analysis in the Global Transport Scenarios 2050 report, which was managed by WEC's Senior Project Manager, Dr Ayed Al- Qahtani, and will again describe two distinct scenarios. One will envisage a world where pure market forces prevail to create a climate for open global competition and solutions which are driven by lowest cost and the private sector. The other scenario will describe a more regulated world where governments decide to intervene in markets to promote early adoption of alternative technology solutions and invest in infrastructure putting common interests at the forefront. It is hoped that this report could be completed in time for the COP18 meeting to help inform policy makers of the future challenges and opportunities presented in the energy space.