8.3.1. Global Commodities

MUSE handles a configurable number and type of commodities which are primarily used to represent energy, services, pollutants/emissions. The commodities for the simulation as a whole are defined in a csv file with the following structure, which is referenced from the TOML settings file using the global_commodities key.

Global commodities

commodity	description	commodity_type	unit
hardcoal	Coal	Energy	PJ
agires	Agricultural-residues	Energy	PJ

commodity

the internal name used for a commodity inside the model (e.g. “heat” or “elec”). Any references to commodities in other files must use these names.

description (optional)

an extended name/description of a commodity (e.g. “Heating” or “Electricity”).

commodity_type

defines the type of a commodity:

The energy type includes energy commodities, such as biomass, electricity, gasoline, and hydrogen, which are either extracted, transformed from one to another, or used in the energy system.

The service type includes commodities such as space heating or hot water which correspond to selected people’s needs, and whose fulfillment requires energy uses.

The material type represent non-energy inputs for energy technologies, such as limestone or oxygen.

The environmental type refers to non-energy commodities whichare used to quantify an impact on the environment, such as greenhouse gases or CO2. They can be subjected to different types of environmental fees or taxes.

unit (optional)

is the unit used to represent quantities of the commodity (e.g “PJ”). This parameter does not need to be included, as it isn’t used in the model, but is highly recommended for documentation purposes. In any case, care should be taken to ensure that units are consistent across all input files.

Additional optional columns

Users can provide additional columns for extra information about the commodity (e.g. heat_rate). These will be ignored by the model, but can be useful for documentation purposes.