About Energy Studies Institute

Synopsis

Climate change mitigation has been a global consensus and a collective endeavour. Energy system transition is critical to achieving 2030 NDCs and further decarbonisation till 2050. Such a transition needs to meet future energy demand and should be technologically and economically feasible. However, modern energy system becomes increasingly complex in digital age, and often involves multiple players, which makes the design of proper transition strategies difficult. Techniques such as forecasting, optimization and data-driven decision making seem well-suited to deal with this challenge. This workshop will focus on efforts to facilitate energy system transition towards sustainability, and the related challenges and opportunities. It will cover a series of modelling advances and applications related to energy forecasting and optimization. The target audiences include students, scholars, policy experts, business strategists as well as those who are interested in energy system transition.

 

 

Time	Agenda
09:00 - 09:30	Registration
09:30 – 09:50	Associate Professor LEE Poh Seng, Energy Studies Institute, NUS Prof. Toh Kim Chuan, Department of Mathematics, NUS
Session 1: Forecasting and modelling of energy system Moderator: Su Bin, Energy Studies Institute, NUS
09:50 – 10:30	Rafal Weron, Wrocław University of Science and Technology, Poland Title: Electricity Price Forecasting in the 2020s
10:30 – 11:10	Ying Chen, Department of Mathematics, NUS, Singapore Title: AI forecasting for Energy
11:10 – 11:30	Coffee break
11:30 – 12:10	Yu Liu, College of Urban and Environmental Sciences, Peking University, China Title: The Impacts on Economy and Emissions in China toward Carbon Neutrality
12:10 – 12:50	Wei Li, Institute of Operations Research & Analytics, NUS, Singapore Title: An eXplainable Multi-stage Stochastic Optimisation for Bunker Procurement Planning
12:50 – 14:30	Lunch
Session 2: Transforming energy system Moderator: Chen Ying, Department of Mathematics, NUS
14:30 – 15:10	Thorsten Koch, Technische Universität Berlin & Zuse Institute Berlin, Germany Title: From a Single Building to the Whole of Europe
15:10 – 15:50	Jakub Tomczyk, Sun Cable, Australia Title: Sun Cable's Current and Future Research Initiatives
15:50 – 16:10	Coffee break
16:10 – 16:50	Katarzyna Sznajd-Weron, Wrocław University of Science and Technology, Poland Title: Agent-based Model of Adoption of Low Carbon Products and Practices
16:50 – 17:30	Sheng Zhong, Energy Studies Institute, NUS, Singapore Title: Accelerating ASEAN's Energy Transition in Power Sector through Cross-Border Transmission Grids

About the Speakers

1. Rafal Weron (Wrocław University of Science and Technology, Poland)

Rafal Weron is Professor of Management Science, Rector's Proxy for the Evaluation of the Quality of Scientific Activity, Head of the Management and Quality Studies Council and Head of the Department of Operations Research and Business Intelligence at the Wrocław University of Science and Technology. He is a member of the Academia Europaea - Academy of Europe, the Statistics and Econometrics Committee of the Polish Academy of Sciences (KSiE PAN) and the International Institute of Forecasters (IIF), General Chair of the Energy Finance Christmas (EFC) Workshops series and Associate Editor of Computational Statistics, Energies, International Journal of Forecasting, Journal of Energy Engineering, Journal of Energy Markets, National Economy and Operations Research and Decisions. He is the recipient of the Ministry of Science and Higher Education Prize for outstanding academic achievements (2016), the Emerald Citation of Excellence Award (2017), the IIF Tao Hong Award for the best paper on energy forecasting published in the International Journal of Forecasting (2017), the Hugo Steinhaus prize of the Polish Mathematical Society for outstanding achievements in Applied Mathematics (2018), one of the 30 Creative Minds of Wrocław (2019), and the International Journal of Forecasting Outstanding Paper in Energy Forecasting Award (2022).

2. Ying Chen (Department of Mathematics, NUS, Singapore)

Dr. Ying Chen is a financial statistician and data scientist. She develops statistical modelling and machine learning methods customized for nonstationary, high frequency and large dimensional complex data such as limit order book and renewable energy. She works on forecasting, quantum computing in finance, citation analysis and research metrics, financial text mining and sentiment analysis, and network analysis. Dr. Chen is Associate Professor in Department of Mathematics, Academic 4 Director of the Digital FinTech PhD program in Asian Institute of Digital Finance, and Joint Appointee in Risk Management Institute, National University of Singapore

3. Yu Liu (College of Urban and Environmental Sciences, Peking University, China)

Yu Liu, is tenured Professor and Ph.D. Advisor of College of Urban and Environmental Sciences of Peking University, Boya Distinguished Professor of Peking University, recipient of the National Science Fund for Distinguished Young Scholars, vice chairman of Socio-Economic Systems Engineering Committee of Systems Engineering Society of China, and vice chairman of Energy Economics and Management Research Branch of Chinese Society of Optimization, Overall Planning and Economical Mathematics. He has been committing himself to researches on the impacts of energy and environmental policies on economic and emissions applying to Computable General Equilibrium (CGE) Model. Up to now, he has published 168 journal papers, including 110 SCI/SSCI papers, published in internationally renowned journals such as Nature Communication, Nature Sustainability, Energy Economics, Environment Science & Technology. He has presided 56 scientific research projects, including National Key R&D Program of the Ministry of Science and Technology, Major Program of National Natural Science Foundation of China, Double Carbon Special Program of National Natural Science Foundation of China, General Projects of National Natural Science Foundation of China and Emergency Projects of National Natural Science Foundation of China.

4. Wei Li (Institute of Operations Research & Analytics, NUS, Singapore)

Wei Li is currently a research fellow at the Institute of Operations Research and Analytics National University of Singapore. He received his Ph.D. degree in computational finance from Norwegian University of Science and Technology master’s degrees in both financial forecasting and investment and financial computing from University of Glasgow and Queen Mary University of London respectively and 5 bachelor’s degree in business management from Jilin University. His research focuses on eXplainable AI data science and energy analytics with papers published in Quantitative Finance Energy and Journal of Commodity Market etc.

5. Thorsten Koch (Technische Universität Berlin & Zuse Institute Berlin, Germany)

Prof. Dr. Thorsten Koch is Professor for Software and Algorithms for Discrete Optimization at TU-Berlin and head of the Applied Algorithmic Intelligence Methods and the Digital Data and Information for Society, Science, and Culture departments at the Zuse Institute Berlin (ZIB). He has worked in several areas, especially the planning of infrastructure networks, chip verification, mathematics education and integer optimization. From 2008-2014 he was the coordinator of the FORNE project, an industry collaboration project regarding gas transportation involving five universities and two research institutes. The project received the 2016 EURO Excellence in Practice Award of the European OR Society. From 2013-2019 he was head of the GasLab and the SynLab within the Research Campus MODAL (Mathematical Optimization and Data Analysis Laboratory). The project Optimized Execution of Dispatching conducted together with Germanys largest Gas Transmission System Operator became finalist of the 2020 INFORMS Innovative Applications in Analytics Award. Currently, the work is focused on developing high-performance parallel methods for solving large-scale structured optimization problems. Such problems arise, for example, in data-driven, real-world analysis and planning of sustainable network infrastructures. This includes high-performance solvers for Steiner Tree Problems in Graphs (STPG) and Quadratic Unconstraint Binary Optimization (QUBO).

6. Jakub Tomczyk (Sun Cable, Australia)

Dr Jakub Tomczyk is a performance driven and analytical leader with a robust portfolio 6 of risk management and mathematical modelling skills. He has 15y+ of experience in designing, planning and delivery of solutions to commercially relevant problems. He blends academic training in mathematics with project management skills across a wide range of industries. Jakub is the Head of Risk Analytics and Insights in Sun Cable. He is leading the management of project teams to ensure coordination and delivery of a portfolio of modelling projects in accordance with industry best practices. He strategically coordinates planning of multiple risk related and research tasks and grows the next generation of quantitative specialists.

7. Katarzyna Sznajd-Weron (Wrocław University of Science and Technology, Poland)

Katarzyna Sznajd-Weron is Professor of Social Simulations and Statistical Physics and mentor of Academia Iuvenum at the Wrocław University of Science and Technology. She is a board member of the Polish Physical Society - Section of Physics in Economics and Social Sciences (FENS), Advisory Editor of Physica A and Associate Editor of Frontiers in Physics. She is the recipient of the Ministry of Science and Higher Education Prize (1997, 1999, 2002), the Young Scientist Award for Socioand Econophysics (2007) and the Medal of the Commission of National Education (2011). Over the last 20 years Katarzyna has built an impressive international reputation. With over 2000 Scopus-indexed citations (w/o auto-citations) and an H-index in excess of 20, she is one of the leading world experts on opinion dynamics. Her other research interests include agent-based modeling and simulation, complex systems, computational economics, phase transitions and social psychology. She is the co-author of the widely acclaimed Sznajd model of opinion formation; the original article (IJMPC, 2000) has been cited well over 1000 times (Scopus; w/o auto-citations). She has published over 80 peer-reviewed journal articles (most notably in top-tier Chaos, Physical Review E, Physical Review Letters, PLoS One, Renewable & Sustainable Energy Reviews, and Scientific Reports). 

8. Sheng Zhong (Energy Studies Institute, NUS, Singapore)

Dr. Zhong Sheng is a Senior Research Fellow at the Energy Studies Institute, National University of Singapore. Prior to that, he was a PhD Fellow at the United Nations University, Maastricht Economic and Social Research Institute on Innovation and Technology (UNU-MERIT) in the Netherlands, funded by the United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO). His research interests include sustainable development, innovation and technological change, with a focus on energy issues. His research field also covers applied econometrics, global value chains and international economics. He previously contributed to various consultation projects at UNU and UNIDO, including the UNIDO Industrial Development Reports 2016, 2018, 2020 and 2022.