Long-range Energy Alternatives Planning System

LEAP: the Long range Energy Alternatives Planning system, is a Windows-based software system for energy and environmental policy analysis. It is widely used for integrated energy planning and climate change mitigation analysis and has been applied in hundreds of different organizations in over 190 countries.

LEAP is developed and supported by the U.S. Center of the Stockholm Environment Institute, a non-profit research institute based at Tufts University in Somerville, Massachusetts. Most recently LEAP has been chosen by 85 countries as the main modeling tool for the climate change mitigation assessments that will be presented to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC)

Some recent applications of the tool include:

• Energy for a Shared Development Agenda (2012): An SEI report describing a set of global energy and GHG emissions scenarios published for the United Nations Rio+20 conference.
• The Massachusetts Clean Energy and Climate Protection Plan (2010): LEAP was used as the main modeling tool for helping to develop the Government of Massachusetts new Clean Energy and Climate Protection Plan.
• Europe’s Share of the Climate Challenge (2009): A report developed by SEI in partnership with Friends of the Earth Europe (FoEE) that analyzes how Europe can embark on a transition to a low GHG future – enabling it to achieve GHG emissions reductions of 40% in 2020 and 90% in 2050 relative to 1990 levels through a combination of radical improvements in energy efficiency, the accelerated retirement of fossil fuels and a dramatic shift toward various types of renewable energy forms.

LEAP is distributed at no charge to not-for-profit, academic and governmental organizations based in developing countries.

See also

• Carbon accounting
• Energy planning
• Energy planning software
• LEAP (disambiguation) (Other definitions of the acronym LEAP)

External links

• LEAP Web Site
• LEAP User Guide
• An introduction to LEAP
• Applications of the LEAP system
• LEAP Training Exercises
• Stockholm Environment Institute-U.S. Center
• Stockholm Environment Institute web site
• Tufts University