Supply
Wind, water, sun and heat in each zone; gas, coal, uranium and fuel imports nationally; biomass from WS3 and FABLE.
65supplies
RNW · MIN · IMP · SUPCLEWs · NRCan · OSeMOSYS Canada
C2070 is a least-cost energy model of Canada: 13 zones in 9 provinces, every technology from wind farms to interprovincial lines, chosen together for 2021–2070 in one optimisation. Forests and farmland come from WS3 and FABLE; biomass links the three.
How the model decides
Picture the model as a spreadsheet. Columns are choices it can make. Rows are rules every answer must obey. Here is one small corner of it, for Alberta in 2030. The codes falling in the header above are the real names of those columns.
How much gas to burn, how much wind or solar to build, how much power to bring in from next door. One column for each, in every zone and every year.
Whatever mix the model picks has to add up to what Alberta's homes, businesses and industry need. That is one row.
Wind doesn't blow all the time. A power line has a size. A policy can require clean power. Each limit is another row.
Every choice has a price. The solver fills in an amount for every column so that every row holds, at the lowest total cost.
Repeat this small grid for 13 zones and 50 years, and tie the zones together with power lines: 43,681 rules and 37,584 choices, solved in one go.
Inside every zone
The same chain repeats in each of the 13 zones. Only transmission crosses between them.
Wind, water, sun and heat in each zone; gas, coal, uranium and fuel imports nationally; biomass from WS3 and FABLE.
Ten plant types compete on cost, efficiency and capacity factor. 145 GW of observed 2021 fleet retires on a schedule.
Distribution inside each zone, and 12 links between zones that the model can expand when it pays.
Industry, homes, business and transport, by fuel, from CER Energy Futures 2026: 9,328 PJ nationally in 2025.
CLEWs
Climate, Land, Energy and Water are modelled together. C2070 covers energy; WS3 resolves forests and harvest; FABLE resolves farmland, food and land use. They meet where biomass crosses.
Roadmap
The model builds and solves end to end. The work now is replacing placeholders with Canadian data, adding time of day and season, and wiring the WS3 and FABLE links.
Model structure, 13-zone set builder, data staging, solve to optimal, diagnostics, dashboard.
Demand and the 2021 fleet are in from CER EF2026; costs, interties and emission factors are next.
Replace the single annual timeslice with seasonal and daily slices.
Feedstock supply per zone and WS3 supply curves.
Food demand and land constraints handed across.
Results dashboard and transmission maps; per-province plots to come.
Provincial policy constraints work; real targets and CER scenarios to load.
Calibrate against history, automate the full run, publish the methods.
Where to next