WORKING GROUP PRESENTATION FOR DISCUSSION PURPOSES ONLY.

DO NOT QUOTE OR CITE BECAUSE RESULTS ARE SUBJECT TO CHANGE.

December 14, 2023

MEMORANDUM FOR: Angelina LaRose

Assistant Administrator for Energy Analysis

FROM: Jim Diefenderfer

Director, Office of Long-Term Energy Modeling

SUBJECT: Summary of Annual Energy Outlook 2025 (AEO2025) Working Group for

Electricity, Coal, Renewables, and Nuclear held on October 25, 2023

The working group presentation summarized the proposed model enhancements for the Annual Energy 

Outlook 2025 (AEO2025) for electricity, coal, renewables, and nuclear. The presentation materials

included these updates and are available as a separate document on EIA.gov.

Overview

Because we are not publishing an Annual Energy Outlook in 2024, AEO2025 will include an increased 

number of model enhancements compared with previous years. Developments for AEO2025 include 

introducing hydrogen representation; improving carbon capture, transportation, and sequestration 

modeling; improving electric power sector modeling; improving technology representation; and more 

comprehensively addressing existing and upcoming laws and regulations. This working group focused 

only on improving electric power sector modeling. Future working groups will focus on other model 

development efforts. 

Model updates

EIA staff summarized the proposed model updates and enhancements for AEO2025, which include:

• Develop the model capable of representing a credible zero-carbon emissions electric power 

sector through one or more likely policy mechanisms

• More fully represent provisions of the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 (IRA)

• Improve model performance

• Update resource supply curves for hydro, geothermal, biomass, wind, and solar

• Modernize the optimization of the NEMS Electricity Market Module (EMM)

• Improve model convergence

We also discussed EIA’s parallel effort to explore and design its next generation of long-term energy 

models (Project BlueSky), independent of the AEO2025 analysis and publication schedules. We are still 
WORKING GROUP PRESENTATION FOR DISCUSSION PURPOSES ONLY.

DO NOT QUOTE OR CITE BECAUSE RESULTS ARE SUBJECT TO CHANGE.

in an early exploratory and experimental phase and plan to develop an initial prototype model during 

2024 as part of this effort. 

We concluded the presentation with a discussion our long-term plans for model enhancements in 

AEO2025 and beyond.

We informed participants that another working group with development activity updates for AEO2025 

will take place in spring 2024, with a subsequent working group with preliminary results in late summer 

2024.

The meeting then opened for questions and comments about updates we are considering for AEO2025 

and beyond. We received no questions from the audience. 

Attendees

We hosted the working group meeting entirely online, and 89 people attended, including EIA staff and 

external participants. Attendees represented several organizations, including:

Congressional Budget Office

U.S. Department of Defense

U.S. Department of Energy

Electric Power Research Institute 

Energy Canada

ICF Consulting

Midcontinent Independent System Operator

National Aeronautics and Space 

Administration

National Mining Association 

Natural Resources Defense Council

Nuclear Energy Institute

OnLocation

PJM Interconnection

Resources for the Future

Rhodium Group

Sandia National Laboratory

Sargent & Lundy

Solar Energy Industries Association

Southwest Power Pool

Wartsila

A full list of attendees is provided below.

External participants.
WORKING GROUP PRESENTATION FOR DISCUSSION PURPOSES ONLY.

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First Name Last Name Organization

David Adler Congressional Budget Office

Chris Kerestes Department of Defense

Lissette

Rodriguez 

Cabanas Department of Defense

Andrew Foss Department of Energy

Jai-woh Kim Department of Energy

James Easton Department of Energy

Jordan Kislear Department of Energy

Marc Melaina Department of Energy

Mike Kolian Department of Energy

Paul Spitsen Department of Energy

Reginald Mitchell Department of Energy

Geoffrey Blanford Electric Power Research Institute 

Romey James Electric Power Research Institute 

Tom Wilson Electric Power Research Institute 

Robin White Energy Canada

Thomas Dandres Energy Canada

Victor Keller Energy Canada

Boddu Venkatesh ICF Consulting

Tony Hunziker Midcontinent Independent System Operator

Mohit Mehta

National Aeronautics and Space 

Administration

Leslie Coleman National Mining Association 

Amanda Levin Natural Resources Defense Council

Julianne McCallum Nuclear Energy Institute

Matt Crozat Nuclear Energy Institute

Frances Wood OnLocation

Pete Whitman OnLocation

Sharon Showalter OnLocation

Thomas Sterle OnLocation

Emmanuele Bobbio PJM

Mojgan Hedayati PJM Interconnect

Aaron Bergman Resources for the Future

Anna van Brummen Rhodium Group

Ben King Rhodium Group

Hannah Kolus Rhodium Group

Paul Sharps Sandia National Laboratory

Joshua Junge Sargent & Lundy

Tyler Thompson Solar Energy Industries Association

Joshua Norton Southwest Power Pool

Alex Espejo Wartsila
WORKING GROUP PRESENTATION FOR DISCUSSION PURPOSES ONLY.

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U.S. Energy Information Administration Staff

First Name Last Name

Katherine Antonio

Erin Boedecker

Richard Bowers

Kien Chau

Singfoong Cheah

Jonathan Church

Michael Cole

Anna Cororaton

Jim Diefenderfer

Kenneth Dubin

Kathryn Dyl

Mindi Farber-DeAnda

Alexander Felhofer

David Fritsch

Peter Gross

Tyler Hodge

Patricia Hutchins

Jonathan Inbal

Kevin Jarzomski

Scott Jell

Christina Jenq

Mackenzie Jones

Ari Kahan

Augustine Kwon

Angelina LaRose

Vikram Linga

Nilay Manzagol

Cara Marcy

Laura Martin

Alexander Mey

Mark Morey

Kevin Nakolan

Christopher Peterson

Catherine Prendergast

Suparna Ray

Sauleh Siddiqui

Nicholas Skarzynski

Matthew Skelton

Susanna Smith

John Staub

Manussawee Sukunta

John Taber
WORKING GROUP PRESENTATION FOR DISCUSSION PURPOSES ONLY.

DO NOT QUOTE OR CITE BECAUSE RESULTS ARE SUBJECT TO CHANGE.

Edward Thomas

Stephanie Tsao

Nina Vincent

James Willbanks