Schlossplatz 1
IIASA Energy-ENACT (Energy Access Tool)
This interactive policy analysis tool, ENACT, has been developed at the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA) in support of the Global Energy Assessment (GEA). The software has been developed within the Energy Program at IIASA. Financial support for software development was co-funded by the Global Environment Facility and the United Nations Industrial Development Organization.
The central purpose of the tool is to aid decision makers in their assessments of future policy choices and their effectiveness in achieving universal modern energy access goals by 2030. The tool has been specifically designed for policy advice and the communication of scenario results, allowing users to visualize costs and benefits of specific policy choices and to better understand the impacts of policies on the likely development of future residential energy access and demands.
A brief tutorial on the use of the policy tool can be found below. If you experience any technical problems, please contact the ENACT Policy Tool Administrator.
Navigating the Website
Toward the top of the browser window, several navigation tabs are found. These tabs are described in more detail below.About
Provides information about the policy tool and this website, as well as some instructions on how to use them.
Tool
Webpage where users can find the actual policy tool.
Documentation
Further information on the analytical methods underlying the policy tool (i.e., the methods for analyzing policy options, their costs, effectiveness and impacts).
How to Use the Policy Tool
Quick-Start Guide
(1) Click on the Tool tab at the top of the page.
(2) Move the positions of the slider bars in order to select the various policy options and targets for energy access.
(3) Click on the indicator tabs to view results for the current set of user-defined selections.Extended Discussion
The ENACT policy tool is easy to use and requires no previous knowledge of either energy modeling or access and fuel choice analysis methods. That being said, it does assume at least a modest familiarity with the pressing global energy access challenges currently facing society, as well as the potential policies to address this problem.
Users must only specify which of the policies for energy access they wish to select. Users can simply "play around" with different combinations of policies and selections, in order to gain an improved understanding of the costs and benefits of specific policy choices. For each combination of user-defined selections, the tool selects a single scenario and presents the costs and impacts associated with the specified preferences.
A rich ensemble of 60 scenarios underlies the policy tool. These scenarios explore policies and their impacts for achieving universal modern energy access by 2030. The scenarios have been developed using MESSAGE-Access (a global household energy access model).
For each selected scenario, the tool provides a wealth of information to the user. For example, one can analyze how many people are likely to gain access through the choice of specific policies, what the impacts of these policies will be (in terms of changes in energy demand and emissions, and benefits from human deaths avoided), and how much all of it could cost.
At the present time, the policy tool focuses its analysis on three major world regions – sub-Saharan Africa, South and Pacific Asia, which face the most acute lack of access today. It only considers access to electricity and modern energy for cooking in the residential sector as its objectives. Future work will concentrate on different regional scales, as well as bringing additional objectives under consideration.
ENACT Policy Tool, 2011
Available at: http://www.iiasa.ac.at/web-apps/ene/ENACT/
Responsible for this page: ENACT Policy Tool Administrator