Open Energy Modelling Initiative (openmod)

The Open Energy Modelling Initiative (openmod) promotes open science principles, supporting energy system decarbonisation through transparent data sharing, modelling tools, and fostering global research collaboration. Workshops and a 1,400-member forum ensure widespread participation and knowledge exchange.

Highlights

• Openmod has facilitated 18 international workshops, providing platforms for energy system modellers globally.
• 1,400 carefully screened members participate in the openmod discussion forum, enhancing research collaboration.
• The openmod community drives open-source energy modelling, empowering global south researchers to contribute meaningfully.

About this Practice

Public policy for energy and climate often relies on intransparent models, whereby the input data, underlying assumptions, and/or numerical processing are either opaque or legally encumbered, thus hindering and perhaps preventing transparency, reusability, and accountability in decision-making.

Growing awareness of these limitations led to the creation of the Open Energy Modelling Initiative (openmod) in Berlin in September 2014. At that time, 28 energy system modellers came together to create a manifesto advocating the open licensing of energy modelling frameworks, datasets, and research findings.

In the context of energy modelling, "open" stands for publishing and sharing source code and data under established open-source and open data licences. These licences clearly define how the associated work can be used, modified, and redistributed by modellers to the benefit of their respective communities and beyond.

Accordingly, the openmod encourages the sharing of source code, datasets, early-stage ideas, and research outputs, aiming to improve model accuracy, reproducibility, transparency, and comprehensiveness. Additionally, it seeks to improve research efficiency through consensus standards for data semantics and metadata and creating consistent interfaces for submodels and support libraries. The Open Energy Ontology project, for instance, provides formalised definitions for data, thereby improving information collection, sharing, collaboration, and review.

The openmod initiative has successfully fostered an international community of energy modellers, hosted 18 workshops, and created an online forum and mailing list, each with 1400 members. The openmod enables a social network that connects researchers in the global south and north, enabling a wider participation in decarbonisation efforts and catalysing useful exchanges more generally. Key achievements include influencing public agencies, like the EU Joint Research Centre, to adopt open-source frameworks.

The openmod community continues to grow, with widening geographical participation, as open energy modelling becomes increasingly mainstream for public policy support. Indeed, this entirely volunteer effort is leading the shift towards more collaborative, transparent, and repeatable energy system modelling, underpinned by important principles from open science.