The role of agriculture in energy and climate modelling

Agriculture remains a major "blind spot" in climate-energy modeling despite its significant contribution to CO2 emissions and fossil fuel use. A review of 77 leading Integrated Assessment and energy system models reveals widespread simplifications, where the sector is often treated as a "black box" or a static source of land-use emissions rather than a dynamic energy consumer. The study categorizes agricultural operations into three phases: pre-production (e.g., fertilizers), production (e.g., machinery and irrigation), and post-production (e.g., storage and cold chains). While 56 models include direct energy use, they typically employ lump-sum inputs rather than process-level drivers like machinery types or animal heads. Crucially, only 20 models explicitly represent irrigation, and many lack the granularity to assess fuel-switching technologies, such as electric tractors or green ammonia.

To address these structural gaps, the AgEnRes project is expanding the OPEN-PROM model to enhance the representation of agriculture. This development moves beyond an aggregate sector toward a detailed, process-based representation. Key enhancements include disaggregating machinery stocks (tractors, harvesters) to capture mitigation and electrification potential and dynamically linking fertilizer demand to production to simulate sectoral mitigation targets.

Preliminary results underscore the sector's high structural dependency on diesel, which accounts for about 60% of the EU’s direct agricultural energy consumption. This dependency creates significant vulnerability to energy price shocks. By integrating process-level detail, the expanded OPEN-PROM model will provide robust scenarios for national and EU climate strategies, identifying feasible and cost-efficient pathways toward net-zero through energy efficiency, electrification, and technology turnover.