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Long-range energy system models provide valuable evidence for decisions in energy policy, industry, and science. Yet, such models have been extensively criticized for their techno-economic bias and a lack of real-world realism when modeling socio-technical systems decades ahead. In this presentation, I will discuss how empirical evidence and insights from social sciences could be used to improve the real-world realism of energy system models.

Evelina Trutnevyte is an associate professor and head of the Renewable Energy Systems group at the University of Geneva. Evelina is an energy systems analyst and modeler, specializing in renewable energy, long-range energy projections, socio-technical analysis, and decision making under deep uncertainty and at science-society interface. She is an engineer by training and has completed her PhD studies at ETH Zurich, Chair of Natural and Social Science Interface. She brings experiences from three different departments of ETH Zurich as well as University College London Energy Institute, ÃÛÌÒÊÓƵ, Aalborg University, and Vilnius Gediminas Technical University.

In addition to an extensive list of peer-reviewed journal publications, she has received two of the most prestigious and competitive Swiss National Science Foundation grants: Eccellenza for tenure-track professors (2021 – 2025) and Ambizione Energy (2015 – 2018). As principal investigator, she has led projects for over 7.8 million Swiss francs (7.8 million euros) from a diverse range of sources, including Swiss National Science Foundation, Swiss Federal Office of Energy, European Horizon grants, and industrial funding. In 2021-2027, she co-leads the national SWEET-EDGE consortium "Enabling decentralized renewable generation in the Swiss cities, midlands, and the Alps" with 19 research groups, 60 practice partners, and the overall budget of 22.3 mln CHF.

Evelina is a coordinating lead author of the chapter "Projected futures in the context of sustainable development and climate change" of the Working Group III of the seventh Assessment Report (AR7) of the intergovernmental Panel of Climate Change (IPCC). She is member of the Federal Energy Research Commission (CORE) and Extended Energy Commission of the Swiss Academies of Arts and Sciences. She is an associate editor of Renewable and Sustainable Energy Transition and an assistant deputy editor of Climatic Change, and a member of the editorial board of Environmental Modelling & Software. She acts as a reviewer for many journals, including Science, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States (PNAS), Nature Climate Change, Nature Energy, or Joule, or Applied Energy, as well as for several funding mechanisms, like European Research Council, Swiss National Science Foundation, Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research, and others.