Open Insights

Open Insights brings academic energy modelling, policy expertise and open-source infrastructure together to produce transparent, replicable analysis for Canadian decision-makers. The Energy Modelling Hub is a founding partner and operates the infrastructure the initiative runs on.

Open Insights publishes its work at openinsights.ca, where you will find its current assessments, services and team.
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Our mission

Open Insights provides a credible, transparent modelling platform that policymakers, researchers and civil society can use to inform climate and energy transition policy, and delivers timely, objective analysis of policy announcements and political platforms.

Three commitments hold across everything the initiative publishes. The models are released openly for the community to use. The code, assumptions and data behind every result are public. The documentation is complete enough for another researcher to reproduce the analysis independently.

Opportunities for Collaboration

Open Insights is guided by a for and by the community ethos and engages a wide network of contributors in developing and refining its models. To discuss a collaboration, contact Deven Azevedo, Open Insights Project Director, at [email protected].

Open Insights is a collaboration between the Sustainable Energy Systems Integration and Transitions Group at the University of Victoria, the Energy Modelling Hub, the Energy and Materials Research Group at Simon Fraser University, and Macrocosm Group. The initiative is supported by the Clean Prosperity Foundation and the Northpine Foundation.

To be kept in the loop, sign up for its newsletter at openinsights.ca.

Open Insights Suite of Models
MESSAGEix-Canada
A model covering all energy sectors in the economy, including oil & gas, power, buildings and transportation, designed to investigate long-term energy pathways and comprehensively assess energy policy packages.
CIMS
An integrated energy-economy-emissions model designed to estimate policy effects and interactions in Canada’s energy system, while realistically including detailed technologies and consumers’ preferences and behaviour.
Macromodel
An agent-based macroeconomic model capable of simulating the economic growth, trade and income impacts of provincial and federal climate policies.
Labour ABM
An agent-based model designed to understand the response of labour markets to the energy transition.
Energy ABM
An agent-based model simulating the investment behaviors of firms in the energy sector as they develop and decommission energy projects in response to policy changes throughout the energy transition.
Technology cost forecast time-series models
A collection of data-driven models designed to forecast future costs of different energy technologies under certain deployment and investment scenarios.
COPPER
The Canadian Opportunities for Planning and Production of Electricity Resources (COPPER) framework is an electricity system planning model used to understand how policies impact the grid mix, transmission investments and emissions in and across provinces.
SILVER
The Strategic Integration of Large-capacity Variable Energy Resources (SILVER) tool is used to test the feasibility of a specific electricity system configuration, often provided by a planning model such as COPPER.​