A Glance at the E-GRIDS Project

The main target of this project (starting in November 2001 and ending in October 2002) is to enhance, apply and disseminate the methodology and the simulation tools developed and tested within GRIDS (an RTD project being funded by the European Union 5th Framework Programme).

E-GRIDS was carried out in the field of strategic research, aimed at analysing and understanding the impacts of energy policies in the energy, productive and economic systems and, on the basis of implementation strategies of these policies, assessing and predicting the rate of penetration of new and clean technologies and products in the market.

The idea that originated E-GRIDS, stems from the observation that available methodologies to analyse the energy policy impact are still incomplete, since quantitative methods to forecast the rate of penetration of a given technology are still missing and policies aimed at regulating energy policies are increasingly designed on the basis of a preliminary consensus of the targeted audience.

Thus, the main involved parties must be provided with an agreed knowledge platform, in order to allow the discussion and negotiation to develop around objective elements and information.

This is even more important when envisaged measures encompass voluntary commitments among the involved parties.

E-GRIDS will also allow to explore critical issues still open in the developed methodology, and finally, to investigate the overall socio-economic impacts of policies and measures, in order to create a more powerful analytical tool for future studies and research.