The objectives of the Chair
Become a resource and modeling center to sustainable development
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The functioning of the Chair
A Steering Committee and a Monitoring Committee to ensure good governance of the Chair
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The program of activities of the Chair
Four pillars to reach its central aim of creation of a resource and modeling center
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OBJECTIVESS OF PROSPECTIVE EVALUATION
The main objective of the Chair Modeling for sustainable development is to perpetuate around industry and institual actors modeling tools to support prospective thinking over the stake of sustainable development. In order to meet it, the teams from CIRED (Ecole des Ponts et Chaussées-AgroParisTech) and CMA (MINES ParisTech) ambition to capitalise on their common, yet complementary experiences; they propose the Chair be organized around two pillars:
1. The development and maintenance of modeling and decision making tools at the intersection economy-resources-climate, based on the articulation between technico-economic models (such as MARKAL/Times), models describing economic interdependence over the medium and long-term (such as IMACLIM-R) and reduced forms of the earth system models (such as Mini-Ker or Oscar).
2. A high level training system dedicated to prospective and its numerical tools, based on existing formations within the ParisTech schools, the Post Graduate Master OSE specialized in Energy Systems Optimization 1 and the Master EDDEE (Economy of Sustainable Develoment, the Environment and Energy)2. The goal is here to supply a complete training in the tools of prospective modeling, their use for economic calculus and strategic management and in the historical and institutional analysis of the major issues on development. This training will aim to fill the current deficit of engineers, managers and researchers able to develop and mobilize modeling tools in an interdisciplinary context. The intent is to mix a high technical level, a strong problem-setting ability and the knowledge of the real deliberative processes surrounding the tensions between the short, the long and even the very long-term.
Deploying activities around these two pillars should allow:
- A reinforced presence of the founding labs and their partners in the important locations of national and international expertise surrounding the energy/climate issue, extending their current involvement within the Centre for Strategic Analysis (for France - thanks to the initial support of the French Council for Energy -), theIEA (World Energy Outlook, Energy Technology System Analysis Program), the OECD, theWorld Bank and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
- The energence of a prospective platform for decision-making over issues of energy and climate policies, industrial development and technological choices in a changing context for competition rules. This platform will progressively include links between the energy/climate issue and the other stakes of the sustainable development problem
- An international academic position, through the organisation of international colloquia, publication in disciplinary journals (in Economy, Management and Applied Mathematics) and edition of special issues in specialized journals (energy, environment, transport, water) on the theme of sustainable development.
- The creation of financing programs for PhD student and training seminars answering the needs of partnering companies in the area of prospective (developing a sensitivity to the benefits of a prospective approach in the pursuit of their activities, deepening and skills transfer in the domain).
Both teams leading this project will approach these scientific stakes in a complementary manner by sharing a diagnosis of:
- The importance of a dialogue between economists and engineers, a critical point for any prospective approach having to take nature sciences into consideration;
- The usefulness of "hybrid" models to go beyond the current limits of the sometimes conflict prone dialogue between technological prospective (bottom-up) and economic prospective (top-down), and to make endogenous the links between the enconomy and technical change;
- The interlinking between the energy/climate issues and four key stakes in sustainable development: competition between the land-uses by agriculture, forestry and energy; urban dynamics and transport systems; tensions over water and primary resources; the spatial dimension of industrial investment policies;
- The need for a more realistic representation of the behaviours.
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1 MINES ParisTech in partnership with CREDEN (University of Montpellier I) and EDHEC.
2 University Paris X, AgroParisTech, Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, Ecole des Mines de Paris, Ecole Nationale des Ponts et Chaussées and Ecole Polytechnique.
