The Role of Gaming in the Field of Energy Systems Research

Abstract

The political supports based on the long-term vision is essential to develop the sustainable energy systems. While the gaming appears to be one of the methods to discuss such future issues of social systems, it has not been utilized in the field of energy systems research. This study interdisciplinarily reviews the earlier studies in the fields of dynamic optimization model, game theory, social psychological experiments, and gaming to clarify the advantages of gaming against existing research methods. The review especially focuses on the comparison with the dynamic optimizations models which are often utilized in the field of energy. The results of review show that the gaming can represent a social system as a cluster of agents whose subjective realities are different from each other. This characteristic of gaming is useful to clarify the reason why undesirable future paths are selected under such pluralistic realities, and to discuss how to aim for the more desirable future paths. These advantages of gaming are opposite to these of dynamic optimization model that shows the ideal path to achieve the given political target with minimum cost. Therefore, the gaming is expected to contribute to policy planning in the unique way.