Stanford Engineering
Energy Modeling Forum

EMF 37: Deep Decarbonization & High Electrification Scenarios for North America

 

Investigator

John Weyant 

This Special Issue of Energy and Climate Change reports on the organization and conduct of the EMF 37 on assessing the potential of high electrification of energy end uses in competition with energy supply alternatives to help achieve an affordable, reliable, resilient and sustainable energy system in North America, as well as the key results and recommendations for further model development that emerged from over three years of collaborative research by about 200 study participants.  This study is now completed with 19 overview, topical, cross-cutting, and individual modeling team papers summarizing its results published on-line in Energy and Climate Change.[1]  The broad range of scenarios examined in this study included alternative technological, behavioral, economic and regulatory assumptions.

[1] Weyant, J., G. Blanford, M. Browning, A. Fawcett, and T. Mai (2025). Energy Modeling Forum 37: Deep Decarbonization & High Electrification Scenarios for North America. Energy and C.C., https://www.sciencedirect.com/special-issue/1051QSKVX48

Energy Modeling Forum Objectives and Design Principles

The Energy Modeling Forum was established in 1976 with the goal improving the use and usefulness of quantitative models of the U.S. energy system designed to inform public and private sector decision making across plausible market and policy scenarios. The idea was for working groups of leading model builders and users to select scenarios of common interest and execute a multi-model comparison exercises to:

  • Understand model differences.
  • Understand the strengths and weaknesses of  the existing models/methodologies.
  • Identify useful information and insights for corporate planning and government policy making
  • Identify high priority areas for development of new data, analyses, and modeling methodologies

This process was to be implemented through a set of design principles:

  • Broad and open participation of all interested modelers and model users
  • Focus on model comparisons
  • Emphasis on understanding policy and strategy relevant results
  • Decentralized analysis with each modeling team responsible for its results
  • Wide dissemination of results to all interested parties

During the first ten years of EMF studies the scope of the studies was expanded to consider both energy and related environmental issues, and from a US focus to international and global issues as well.  In addition, during the 1990s, it was recognized that some the modeling teams either were already refining their capabilities or desired to do so in key areas identified as priority areas for future research, so the EMF process was expanded to include “study groups” comprised of sub sets of the full working group membership who designed experiments for sub sets of the participating models and combine efforts to improve the state of the art in these directions.  So the original model comparison framework for the studies was continued, but a new multi-model dimension was added to the studies in which the models could be used in unison with each other in addition in comparison to each in developing new insights and identifying new high priority directions for future research.  This second “multi-model study” dimension of EMF studies has been  greatly expanded  over the last two decades.  The EMF 37 study is a good example of using both of these organizational constructs to improve the use and usefulness of the models being used in informing government regulations and corporate strategies. 

Introduction and Background to the EMF 37 Study

Most careful analyses have concluded that pathways to affordable and resilient energy futures by the second half of this century need to involve high levels of electrification. This supply side transition would be accompanied by continuing demand side shifts in the transportation, buildings, and industry end use energy demand sectors towards electricity use. In addition, concerns have been raised about electric grid integration of high levels of renewable electricity generation because of their intermittent nature.  Clean firm power from fossil fuels and nuclear power generation, etc. need to be available to provide affordable, reliable, and resilient electricity to consumers and businesses.  In a number of key regions, low natural gas prices have motivated some state regulators to implement end-use mandates to promote greater electricity use in the buildings and transportation sectors, but there are large concerns about the extent to which such mandates facilitate achieving broader societal objectives over the coming decades.  

Slower than expected development of advanced biofuels and rapid improvements in battery technologies over the last five to ten years has led to increased interest in the widespread market penetration of electric vehicles (EVs) in both light-duty (passenger vehicles) and heavy-duty (truck) applications. At the same time, some jurisdictions have put in place explicit targets for EV sales and/or put restrictions on sales of internal combustion vehicles.  Although these factors make the prospects for greater use of electric vehicles over the next few decades more likely, the development of charging infrastructure, continued battery improvements, the development of recycling plans, and requisite business models to produce, maintain, and operate large numbers of EVs remain substantial challenges, calling into  question the efficacy of these mandates. In addition, more rapid introduction of EVs has also led to competitive responses from internal combustion vehicle producers and distributors as well as from the oil and gas industry, especially as the U.S has moved towards and now beyond energy independence.

The rapid acceleration of EV-enabling technologies and business models, as well as these remaining challenges, have led most energy outlooks and transition scenarios produced over the last four or five years, for example, by the International Energy Agency, to consider the possibility of a more rapid rate of introduction of electric vehicles without fully developing much detail about how such a transition might occur and how rapidly it might unfold. In addition, the Electric Power Research Institute and National Renewable Energy Laboratory (and others) initiated multi-year assessments of the feasibility, desirability, and broad implications of high electrification futures in the United States with the first reports on this work released during 2018 and 2019, with various updates since then now focusing more directly on energy affordability and energy system reliability security, and resilience.  

Building on these foundations, the EMF 37 multi-model analysis project focused on the possibility of accelerating electrification of the North American energy system through faster electrification of transportation, building, and industry energy demand with the goal of developing insights about whether this strategy would be feasible and desirable given current trends in technology development, diffusion, and utilization. The study gave equal emphasis to trends and regulations focused on increasing electricity demand as well as electricity supply and importantly also included constraints and opportunities for organizing and managing electricity transmission and distribution systems to match supply and demand. This part of the multi-model analysis and assessment included new thinking about – and analyses of – electricity storage technologies, fossil and nuclear energy technologies, fuel switching and electricity demand response programs, regulations, and market innovations.

The first research question that arose was: Can advanced electricity supply, demand, and integration technologies actually lead to a higher the share of electricity or in the absolute utilization of electricity in the US energy system by 2050 relative to a base year like 1990 or 2005?  The second question that arose was: Can the institutional - regulations, regulatory, and market organization - and operational changes required to achieve the such mid-century targets through the development and implementation of advanced electricity technologies be plausibly implemented between now and 2050? In order to be feasible, these transitions would need to be achievable at affordable costs, be implemented in a way that is environmentally sustainable and be consistent with energy security, and energy system reliability and resilience objectives.

Scope of EMF 37 Study

The EMF 37 study focused on the potential for high electricity demand growth in North America including as much detail as possible in the residential, commercial, industrial, and transportation sectors. This geographic scope also allowed the study to leverage the momentum created by the EMF 34 study on North American Energy Integration. A number of the teams that participated in EMF 34 had already agreed on a number of data definitions and results reporting formats, explored some relevant issues, and established a large number of good working relationships. In addition to those models, there were a number of sectoral models that participated in the study to provide more depth into high electrification potentials and constraints in the residential, commercial, industrial, and transportation sectors. However, in order to achieve the objectives of EMF 37, in the initial stages of this study it was necessary to add a large amount of additional detailed sectoral information to the reporting template used in EMF 34, multiplying the number of variables reported by more than a factor of ten.

EMF 37 Working Group

In addition to these groups of energy systems and sectoral modelers, the EMF 37 working group included strategically selected experts on sectoral energy demand trends, as well as on technology and diffusion trends projections in the energy consuming sectors. This group is augmented further by experts in the modeling and algorithms used in modeling these transitions. This working group ultimately included almost 200 participants and observers.

EMF 37 Process

Very initial recruiting of working group members started in summer and early fall 2019 with a very initial pre-study scoping meeting taking place September 26-27, 2019 in Washington DC even as EMF 33, EMF 34, EMF 35, and EMF 36 were still in progress. After that scoping meeting, the group decided on a set of preliminary questions to be addressed within the model inter-comparison study; sketched out a number of tentative common scenarios for the modeling teams to run to address those questions; formed initial study groups to go deeper into some of the technical and institutional issues that arose; and set a schedule for submission, reporting, and debugging model results for the first-round scenarios before a first full working group meeting. By mid-2020, an initial Steering Committee to help guide the overall progress of the study was established by EMF Director John Weyant. This group interacted with various advisors and leading modeling and sectoral analysis experts to collect ideas on what the study should focus on and how it should be organized, especially in the Covid-19 environment in which the process was by then operating. 

The initial in-person working group meeting was to have taken place in Washington DC on May 21-22, 2020 in conjunction with a presentation of the EMF 34 results on the afternoon of May 20th. These meetings were moved online and broken up into more manageable monthly online meetings starting in 2020 due to the Coronavirus pandemic. During the period from February 2020 until September 2020 the recruiting and establishment of four initial study groups was completed. These groups were: (1) Fossil Fuel Management; (2) Transportation Energy Use; (3) Building Energy Use; and (4) Industrial Energy Use, as well as the recruitment of a couple of dozen US and Canadian energy systems modeling groups. These groups were then all brought together for monthly three- to four-hour online meetings starting in November 2020 with the steering committee vetting an initial plan for how to proceed in November and December of 2020, and with the four study groups organizing the agendas for the January-June 2021 meetings around their interests. During this period a small group of “Beta” round scenarios for the energy systems models were designed to familiarize everyone with the data management system being used and the variable and scenario definitions included in the results reporting template. The next few monthly meetings were used to review these initial results and develop a larger group of more integrated “Round #1” scenarios with input from the energy systems modelers and the leaders of the four study groups. Results for these scenarios were reviewed by the whole working group in a series of meetings from the fall of 2021 through 2022. At the same time, the four study groups convened their own monthly meetings to develop and push forward their own work plans and add energy systems modelers who wanted to add more depth in the representation of these sectors. This process helped both the systems modelers and the study groups pursue their objectives.

This process was then repeated in the winter and spring of 2022 (again through monthly online meetings) with a goal of developing a set of round #2 scenarios by the fall of 2022 and reviewing both overview and study group specific scenarios during late 2022 and early 2023. During this period, a number of cross-cutting writing teams were organized to review the results more comprehensively and in greater detail to draw insights for model, as well as regulations and strategy development in greater detail. Eight cross-cut teams (including about a dozen experts per team) were established (1) hydrogen, (2) equity, (3) ancillary air quality impacts, (4) a parallel European study, (5) bio-energy, (6) robust portfolio decision analysis, (7) electricity markets, and (8) a policy overview– and met on their own in between full working group meetings during late 2023 and early 2024. Finally, a number of individual modeling teams prepared papers highlighting unique insights developed from their running of the study scenarios and other scenarios they found particularly interesting. Energy and Climate Change allowed the working group to add papers summarizing more updated and more detailed results being prepared by study participants as they completed the review process.

Overview results from the first stage of the study were published in the first contribution to this special issue (Browning, et al., 2023).  Three study group papers: (1) Carbon Management (Binsted, et al., 2024), (2) Transportation (Hoehne, et al., 2025), and Industry (Kaplan et al. 2025) are included in this special issue.  In addition, seven papers on a broad range of cross-cutting issues: (1) hydrogen (Melaina, et al., 2024), (2) equity (Bistline, et al., 2024), (3) ancillary air quality impacts (Loughlin, et al., 2024), (4) a parallel European study (Sarmiento, et al., 2024), (5) bio-energy (Sands, et al., 2025), (6) robust portfolio decision analysis (Baker, et al., 2025), and (7) electricity markets (Gao, et al., 2025), were published on-line during late 2024 and 2025 as they became available. And seven papers on topics of critical interest were produced by individual modeling teams: (1) O’Keefe, et al. (2024) on the role of electrification in carbon neutrality, (2) Becker, et al. (2025) on the sectoral and distributional implications of economy wide decarbonization, (3) Starke, et al. (2024) on a comparison of the study scenarios in Canada and the U.S, (4) Durga, et al. (2024a) on mitigation pathways in the food processing sector, (5) Charles, et al. (2024) on mitigation pathways in the pulp and paper industry, (6) Durga, et al. (2024b) on mitigation in the iron and steel industry, and (7) Victor, et al. (2024) on the impact of carbon removal technologies.  Finally, a final policy overview (Bistline, et al., 2025) paper was accepted in 2025.

All the final work of the group and set of supporting overview, study group, cross-cut papers, and modelers papers were assembled online in this special issue after careful internal and journal review and revisions by the end of 2025. All the papers published in the journal Energy and Climate Change (Volume 6, 2025) and data used to generate the figures and tables in the special issue can be accessed through the EMF 37 Data Repository. Downloading and working with the EMF 37 data requires a high-dimensional database management application, such as Microsoft Access.

The scenario, region and variable labels in the data base for the overview paper and the overall study data base are described in the first overview paper shown below.

Preface

Overview Papers

Study Group Papers

Crosscut Papers

 

 

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