IESVic Seminar - Deven Azevedo – Open Insights & M3 Platform – Advancing Accessible and Transparent Modeling

Deven Azevedo

Thursday, November 27, 2025

3:30-4:30 pm

MacLaurin D202 

This seminar, led by Deven Azevedo, Project Director, Open Insights Projects, SESIT, will provide an overview of Open Insights, a project launched in 2024 that is advancing accessible and transparent modeling for Canadians. The session will outline the challenge that Canada faces in its transition to a net-zero economy: while Canada has strong modeling groups, the models used for holistic long-term energy and economic pathway analysis are not currently open-source. As a result, policymakers, civil society, industry, and the public have limited access to the data, assumptions, and analysis that inform climate and energy transition policy. Open Insights addresses this by developing credible, transparent modeling tools that can be used to support policy development, advocacy, and public discussion.

The seminar will introduce the components of the project, including the development of open-source energy and economy models, the expansion of the M3 Platform, and the creation of workflows and visualization tools that enable rapid and repeatable pathway assessments. It will also highlight the roles of project partners—SESIT at UVic, the Energy Modelling Hub, Macrocosm Group, and EMRG at SFU—and the range of users the project is designed to serve. Participants will see how Open Insights is building and applying models across the energy system and energy-economy space, the types of policy questions these models can answer, and the project’s multi-year workplan as it moves from base model development to workflow creation, comparative exercises, and rapid-response analysis of climate platforms and plans.