Guest Lecture: Modeling Energy System Futures with Ensemble

Evolved Energy Research co-founder, Ben Haley, spoke at the University of San Francisco to share his latest exploration into the modeling space: Ensemble. The talk spanned theory and reality by grounding the cutting-edge modeling to generate alternatives approach to a familiar topic, analyzing the impact on the energy sector of One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA), which famously rolls back many clean energy incentives and strengthens fossil fuel production. The lecture was an extension of the REPEAT analysis–the rapid scenario-based analysis of OBBBA–for which Haley served as technical lead.

USF Professor and Evolved Senior Fellow, Jim Williams, chairs the Davies Forum, a seminar series comprising graduate students in Energy Systems Management and select undergraduates from across majors. The ongoing series, "Fueling the Future: Energy and Economic Transitions," invites professionals from across the energy sector to share their expertise to help scholars better grasp the energy transition through their unique roles and perspectives.

For Haley, this equated to sharing his latest policy analysis of OBBBA in the Ensemble model. This cutting-edge approach bolsters traditional scenario design, which explores individual predetermined paths to energy optimization, by instead revealing dozens, hundreds, or even thousands of near-optimal pathways to a set of constraints. These alternatives reveal a host of narratives that offer industry, policy-makers, stakeholders, and researchers the power opportunity to explore results to craft the energy future they envision.

The lecture provided students with glimpses of how to conceive of modeling as an intellectual exercise, as well as real-world applications of complex problems. As applied to OBBA, Haley's Ensemble results illuminate energy pathways that reveal more optimism for the future of energy and industries like solar and wind than it seemed from initial scenario-based analysis. Although OBBA took the wind from the sails by halting momentum and removing incentives,