An integrated approach to energy investment planning: A project-level model for Colombia

The benefits of using an integrated approach to model a nation's energy sector are well established. A variety of efforts have been formulated that illustrate the analytical benefits of using models that incorporate multiple energy forms. The most comprehensive existing efforts, however, were designed primarily for use in the industrially developed countries. They do not include many elements that are of great potential significance to developing countries, such as the inclusion of sufficient detail to permit project evaluation or the use of financial constraints on investment spending, nor do they provide an analytical framework that is appropriate to the level of resources available for energy planning in many developing countries.;This dissertation presents an integrated model that is both tailored to the needs of developing countries and more comprehensive than previous integrated energy models of developing countries. The utility of the model is demonstrated in a series of experiments that consider policy issues that are of great potential importance to Colombia and that may have broader implications for other developing countries. In addition to confirming that an integrated energy model offers an effective way to analyze the many complex interrelated issues that potentially confront a developing country's energy sector, some of the experimental results suggest that (1) the unit cost of reducing CO...