The objective of this research area is to examine the long-term prospects of large international gas and electricity infrastructures while taking into account ongoing energy market reforms and demands for a cleaner local and global environment.

Past research at IIASA has focused on the global perspective with the development of scenarios that included more gas grids and looked at the potential for international gas transmission lines and LNG in Eurasia. The Workshop on New Energy Infrastructures in Eurasia held at IIASA in October 2000 concluded that the energy market liberalization in Europe might improve the environment in Asia as it might increase gas transmission from Russia to Asia at the expense of gas exports to Europe. A selection of papers of the workshop was published as a Special Issue of the International Journal of Global Energy Issues (abstracts available here) Vol 18(1):1-112.

In 2001, ECS began collaborating closely with IIASA's Dynamic Systems (DYN) Project to develop and apply a dynamic game-theoretical model to analyze the proposed gas pipelines from Russia, Iran and Turkmenistan to Turkey, one of the fastest growing gas markets in Europe.

Currently, the research focuses on the potential gas exports from the Former Soviet Union to China. This application will consist of coordinating the model development with factual input data and ensuring that national experts (from the Energy Systems Institute, Irkutsk and the Energy Research Institute, Beijing) are involved. ECS will suggest approaches to model the demand for gas and will collect the data on investment costs, demand and supply needed to implement the approach taking into account uncertainty. ECS will also validate the results against its global energy model. In addition, collaborative work with the Ural State Technical University (Ekaterinburg) will continue to expand the game-theoretical models IGOR (Investment in Gas pipelines Optimizing Returns) and G-time to cover more than one market and more than two pipeline investors.

An additional part of this work will involve examining the impact of energy market liberalization in Europe on the prospects of international gas and electricity transmission lines between Europe and the Former Soviet Union. This research basically consists of expanding and adapting the applied general equilibrium model (LIBEMOD) of the Ragnar Frisch Centre for Economic Research (Oslo) to include Russia and the Ukraine. The current model contains 13 countries in Western Europe and focuses on the gas and electricity markets. The Frisch Centre will adapt the model. ECS is to ensure that data are delivered from the partners in FSU (Energy Systems Institute, Irkutsk and the Academy of Sciences, Kiev) and that the models accurately reflect the available information on international transmission lines and potential export flows.

References:
Golovina, O., Klaassen, G., Roehrl, R.A., 2002: An economic model of international gas pipeline routings to the Turkish market: Numerical results for an uncertain future. IIASA Interim Report, IR-02-033, Laxenburg, Austria.

Klaassen, B., Kryazhimskii, A., Tarasyev, A.M., 2001: Competition of gas pipeline projects: Game of timing. IIASA Interim Report, IR-01-037, Laxenburg, Austria.

Klaassen, G., McDonald, A. and Zhao, J., 2001: The future of gas infrastructures in Eurasia, Energy Policy, 29(5):399-413. Reprinted as RR-01-008. International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis, Laxenburg, Austria.

Zhao, J., 2000: Diffusion, Costs and Learning in the Development of International Gas Transmission Lines. IIASA Interim Report, IR-00-054, Laxenburg, Austria.

Responsible for this page: Ger Klaassen
Last updated: 14 Mar 2006