SAPIENTIA: Systems Analysis for Progress and Innovation in Energy Technologies for Integrated Assessment

The SAPIENTIA project is a natural continuation of the SAPIENT project. The main achievement of SAPIENT has been that is has demonstrated a way for using large energy model results together with a stochastic model to build a synthetic tool for integrated policy assessment (ISPA-Integrating System for Priority Assessment). The approach has proven to be fertile providing insights useful for quantitative R&D policy exploration in pursuit of multiple objectives in the presence of uncertainties. However, it has not been possible to involve real decision makers (e.g., the European Commission's Directorate General for Research) in the utilisation of results for budget exploration. This was mainly due to the highly experimental (and high risk) nature of the whole project, meaning that usable results have not been ready at a date early enough to enable stakeholder participation. Therefore, SAPIENTIA is concentrating on the decision support aspects of SAPIENT and in this sense much more focused in scope.
On the other hand, SAPIENTA is no mere extension of SAPIENT. Keeping closely in mind the above aim, it expands significantly the scope by introducing more technologies (candidates for Community R&D support), describing more fully and operationally spill-overs between technologies, enlarging the set of objectives to include the often intractable but all the same politically very important sustainable development considerations, brings into the policy exploration exercises for the longer term, addresses the issues of the relative efficacy of research versus demonstration, puts energy R&D in the context of R&D addressed to other economic sectors and finally concentrates on the methodical use of ISPA involving decision makers capable of interacting with analysts.

• L.Barreto
• T.Gül
• D.A.Krzyzanowski

Barreto, L. and S. Kypreos (2005). Impact Assessment of Energy-related R&D using the Energy-system GMM Model: An Analysis for SAPIENTIA, Contribution to the SAPIENTIA Project (ENK6-CT-2002-00614) sponsored by the European Commission, Paul Scherrer Institute

Barreto, L. and S. Kypreos (2004). Extensions to the Energy-System GMM Model for SAPIENTIA., Contribution to the SAPIENTIA Project (ENK6-CT-2002-00614) sponsored by the European Commission. Paul Scherrer Institute