The flagship essay
Builders and Users
Why every mature discipline separates the two, and why energy modeling is next.
Read moreEnergy system modeling · our work began in 1990
Energy modeling has builders.
It's time it had users, too.
KanORS builds modeling environments and ready-to-use energy system models that let researchers, businesses, and policymakers explore transition choices directly.
Behind that sits a thirty-year project: give model builders instruments that work at the level of their thinking rather than their spreadsheets — and make models rich and transparent enough that, for the first time, you don't have to be a builder to use one.
We should know — we've spent thirty years building this field's instruments.
KanORS has been part of the TIMES framework — among the most widely used energy systems optimization frameworks in the world — since its creation, and is the sole developer of Veda, the standard environment for building and running TIMES models worldwide. Our models have informed the U.S. EIA's International Energy Outlook, the World Bank's climate and development strategies, and national energy planning on five continents. Through it all, one competence: raising the cognitive level of model building — absorbing the mechanical into the platform so a builder's hours go into system design and judgment, not bookkeeping. Everything else we make, including the models anyone can use, is that competence carried to its conclusion. When we say the field is ready to change, it isn't a prediction. It's a progress report.
- 1990India's first energy system model
- 2000sfirst global MARKAL & TIMES models
- 2010sVeda becomes the standard TIMES environment
- 2020sKiNESYS puts models in decision-makers' hands
- TodayVerveStacks: ready-to-run models for 190+ countries, free
One competence, three instruments
Each exists because we kept taking model building more seriously — until models became usable by people who never build.
- For modelers who build
Veda
The environment in which TIMES models are madeData handling, scenario management, and results analysis in one workflow — so your hours go into the energy system, not the plumbing. On your desktop with Veda 2.0, or in the browser with Veda Online, where teams explore models together.
Explore Veda - For organizations that decide
KiNESYS+
Bespoke, high-resolution models — with our guidance throughoutPurpose-built models, evolved with you, for real policy and investment decisions. The platform behind World Bank climate reports, Argonne's Net Zero World initiative, and the in-house TIMES teams at BCG and Deloitte.
Explore KiNESYS+ - For everyone — users and builders alike
VerveStacks
Ready-to-run models for 190+ countries. Free.Professional-grade energy system models built automatically from the world's best open datasets. Ready to run in minutes. Use them as they are — or take them as the richest starting point a model builder has ever had.
Explore VerveStacks
How we think
We don't sell forecasts. We open solution spaces.
A good energy model doesn't tell you what will happen. It shows you the landscape of what could — and lets you walk through it. Test the policy. Move the carbon price. Retire the plant early. Watch the system respond.
That is what modeling is for: not an answer delivered, but a dialogue sustained. Every tool we build — from Veda's scenario engine to VerveStacks' pre-loaded climate pathways — follows one rule: move the mechanics into the machine, and leave the thinking where it belongs — with the builder shaping the system, and the user interrogating it.
Evidence
Thirty years of work speaks for itself.
2003–19
Global models behind the EIA's International Energy Outlook
3
World Bank Country Climate & Development workstreams powered by KiNESYS
2016 →
Technology views for BP's global energy outlooks, every year since
190+
Countries with ready-to-run VerveStacks models
Ideas
The thinking behind the tools.
We publish our arguments, not just our software. Start with the essay this whole site is an abstract of:
The models exist. The tools exist. What's missing is you.
Pick your door above — or write to us and tell us what you're trying to decide.