Case Study: Research Policy Interface Thematic Group
National Energy Demand Strategy, 2023
Commission for Regulation of Utilities establish First National Energy Demand Strategy (NEDS),
setting out the next steps for its development and implementation
Academics and Institutional Affiliation:
Hannah Daly, Paul Deane and Fionn Rogan
MaREI, Sustainability Institute, University College Cork
Evidence of policy outcome referencing the role of the research:
Yes, page 11 of the National Energy Demand Strategy states “Analysis by the MaREI Research Centre concluded that … the power sector must urgently deploy renewable electricity generation and manage electricity demand growth and demonstrated that a quadrupling of renewable electricity generation would be required within the decade … in certain scenarios” and also 118.
Research undertaken that informed or underpinned the policy outcome:
The research that informed this policy impact was future scenario analysis undertaken by a MaREI team at UCC led by Prof. Hannah Daly using the TIMES Ireland Model (Balyk et al. 2022).
That was supplemented with a policy brief that Prof. Daly prepared entitled Prospects for Sectoral Emissions Ceilings, which the National Energy Demand Strategy cites on page 12.
Key learnings for you from this research-policy bridging process:
The Commission for the Regulation of Utilities requested quarterly meetings from the UCC team to keep regularly informed about the policy insights arising from the energy systems modelling research being carried out. This is in part enabled by UCC securing a contract with the Department of Climate, Energy and the Environment for the CAPACITY (Climate Action Pathways & Absorptive Capacity) project, enabling UCC to enhance the absorptive capacity of the policy system to utilise the insights from UCC’s energy modelling tools.
SDGs impacted:
SDG 7 & SDG 13
