Is Energy Planning Moving Towards Sustainable Development? A Review of Energy Systems Modeling and Their Focus on Sustainability

An “energy system” is encompasses the “combined processes of acquiring and using energy in a given society or economy, from primary energy to its final use. For its important role in economic development, energy systems models started to appear in the 70s following the oil crisis. However, in the 90s and 00s, environmental issues as climate change and local pollution have taken the center of the stage in energy modeling due to the high share of negative impacts related to energy production. Today, these models move towards sustainability in general, but are not there quite yet. Having that in mind, this chapter analyzes how energy models are moving towards the sustainable development goals, through a review of 442 publications encompassing 34 modeling tools. Results show that 65% of the studies are concentrated in 2 sustainability goals, with much room for geographical redistribution of models, focusing on less developed countries and tackling other important sustainable development goals related directly or indirectly to energy.