When most people think about the National Energy Modeling System (NEMS), they think of the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) and the Annual Energy Outlook (AEO). That association is understandable. EIA built and maintains NEMS, and the AEO is its most visible output. But framing NEMS as an EIA-only tool significantly undersells its reach.
Over the past three decades, NEMS has been central to the federal energy-policy analytical record. It has not determined every major energy decision, but it has often provided the structured, economy-wide framework through which legislation, regulations, market developments, and policy proposals were translated into internally consistent projections of energy supply, demand, prices, technology deployment, and emissions. NEMS Connect’s companion overview, “NEMS in Practice,” summarizes representative examples of this broader use across federal legislation, regulatory analysis, market studies, and research applications.
Where NEMS Has Been Used Beyond EIA
Georgia Institute of Technology (GT-NEMS)
The most thoroughly documented university NEMS user is Georgia Tech’s Climate and Energy Policy Laboratory (CEPL) in the School of Public Policy. CEPL does not just reference NEMS outputs. It operates a customized version called GT-NEMS and describes using “a unique ensemble of modeling tools including the National Energy Modeling System (NEMS), hybrid NEMS-Input/Output approaches, Monte Carlo methods to characterize uncertainties, and GT-DSM and GT-Solar cost-benefit calculators.”[1],[2]
GT-NEMS has supported a wide range of published and policy-relevant research, including: the energy impacts of national commercial building benchmarking mandates; the effects of relaxed environmental regulations on ozone emissions (doctoral research by PhD student Yufei Li, advised by Professor Marilyn Brown); carbon pricing and clean energy job impacts; and transportation electrification modeling. Georgia Tech has also hosted international workshops featuring NEMS methodology as a core pedagogical tool.
Stanford University
Researchers from Stanford’s Management Science and Engineering Department and the Emmett Interdisciplinary Program in Environment and Resources published peer-reviewed analysis using NEMS to examine how consumer technology choice assumptions in the residential and commercial building sectors affect projected national energy demand.[3] The study was funded by the Packard Foundation, Stanford’s School of Earth Sciences, and the Precourt Energy Efficiency Center, and was conducted in direct collaboration with EIA staff.
Resources for the Future (NEMS-RFF)
Resources for the Future (RFF), a Washington-based research institution closely affiliated with leading universities, developed NEMS-RFF, a modified version of the model built in partnership with OnLocation, a division of KeyLogic.[4] This is the same type of applied, independent NEMS use that NEMS Connect’s “NEMS in Practice” overview highlights under its Research and Academic Use category alongside the Energy Modeling Forum and cross-model scenario comparisons. RFF has used NEMS-RFF to evaluate over 35 U.S. energy and climate policy options for the National Energy Policy Institute, to analyze natural gas as a bridge fuel to a low-carbon future, and to assess the economic effects of lifting the crude oil export ban. RFF’s NEMS-based research is routinely cited in Congressional testimony, Federal Register proceedings, and peer-reviewed literature.[5]
OnLocation and Consulting-Led NEMS Applications
A separate and important category of external NEMS use has been led by OnLocation, now part of KeyLogic. Over several decades, OnLocation has supported EIA, DOE offices, research institutions, industry groups, and NGOs in applying and modifying NEMS for policy and market analysis. Public examples include NEMS-RFF for Resources for the Future,[6] NRDC-NEMS for the Natural Resources Defense Council,[7] DOE’s OP-NEMS[8] and related carbon-management variants, and other customized NEMS applications addressing crude oil exports, LNG exports, offshore leasing, critical materials, carbon capture and storage, power-sector decarbonization, and emerging electricity demand.
This body of work demonstrates both the flexibility of NEMS and the historical access challenge surrounding it. In many cases, organizations have benefited from NEMS-based analysis through a specialist consulting model, where external experts configure, run, and interpret the model on behalf of clients. NEMS Connect builds on that broader history but pursues a different objective: helping academic and research institutions develop direct operating capability so faculty, students, and researchers can design cases, inspect results, build institutional knowledge, and produce publishable work within their own programs.
Rhodium Group
Rhodium Group has an extensive history of using NEMS for policy analysis.[9] Its annual report Taking Stock, an annual outlook on the U.S. energy system and greenhouse gas emissions relies on RHG-NEMS, a proprietary version of NEMS. Each year, Rhodium begins with EIA’s NEMS framework and expands it to reflect current policies, updated assumptions, and a broader treatment of greenhouse gases. Rhodium also expands the breadth output to include state-level results, making RHG-NEMS a useful example of how NEMS can be adapted for recurring, policy-relevant analysis.[10]
NEMS and Major Policy Decisions: The Record
The most compelling argument for NEMS in an academic context is not what the model can do in a lab. It is what it has done to help shape energy policy. That role is especially clear in two major energy-policy debates: crude oil export restrictions and LNG export authorizations. In both cases, NEMS-based and NEMS-informed analyses became part of the formal analytical record used by Congress, DOE, GAO, and other decision-makers to evaluate domestic production, consumer prices, trade flows, and broader energy-market impacts.
Lifting the Crude Oil Export Ban (2015)
For four decades, the United States maintained broad restrictions on crude oil exports rooted in the policy response to the 1970s energy crisis. By 2014 and 2015, the U.S. shale revolution had transformed domestic oil markets, and Congress, federal agencies, industry groups, refiners, and environmental organizations were actively debating whether those restrictions still served their original purpose. EIA’s September 2015 report, Effects of Removing Restrictions on U.S. Crude Oil Exports,[11] became a central part of that debate. The report used EIA’s energy modeling framework, including NEMS-based cases, to evaluate the implications of removing export restrictions for domestic and global crude prices, gasoline prices, domestic production, refining activity, and trade flows. The report’s finding that gasoline prices would likely be unchanged or slightly reduced helped address one of the central consumer-price arguments against repeal.
That EIA analysis entered a broader analytical record that included RFF’s economic analysis of crude oil exports,[12] ICF International/EnSys work using EIA’s AEO/NEMS projections as a baseline,[13] and other studies reviewed by GAO.[14],[15],[16],[17] GAO found that the major studies it reviewed generally projected increased domestic production and likely lower consumer fuel prices if export restrictions were lifted, although estimates varied across models and assumptions. Congress lifted the restrictions in December 2015, the first major change to U.S. oil trade policy in 40 years. In this case, NEMS-based and NEMS-informed analysis was not merely background research; it helped frame the economic and market logic that policymakers used to reassess crude oil export policy.
LNG Export Authorization (2012 to Present)
Following the first DOE approval of an LNG export terminal in 2011, the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources asked DOE to commission two studies to guide subsequent non-FTA export authorization decisions.[18] EIA conducted the domestic energy market analysis using NEMS. A second economic evaluation by NERA Economic Consulting used the EIA NEMS analysis as a direct input to produce the complete study. DOE paused permit issuance while the studies were completed and used the findings to determine whether additional LNG exports were consistent with the public interest under the Natural Gas Act.
EIA updated this analysis for the DOE in 2014[19} and DOE continued to revisit LNG export impacts as market conditions evolved. Most recently, DOE’s 2024 LNG assessment, prepared with support from PNNL, NETL, OnLocation, and Industrial Economics, examined domestic energy market, economic, environmental, energy security, and community impacts across a range of LNG export scenarios. The 2024 assessment used NEMS as part of an integrated modeling framework for evaluating domestic energy market.[20] Across this record, NEMS-based analysis has served as an important analytical foundation for DOE’s evaluation of LNG export authorizations, helping translate export assumptions into implications for U.S. natural gas production, consumption, prices, electricity markets, emissions, and broader economic outcomes.
What This Means for Academic Programs
The pattern across these examples points to a consistent conclusion: NEMS is not just a forecasting model. It is a policy-relevant research platform that allows users to translate assumptions about technology, markets, infrastructure, and policy into internally consistent projections of energy supply, demand, prices, emissions, and investment.
For graduate programs, NEMS capability has three practical advantages. First, it can strengthen research proposals where federal-comparable, systems-level energy modeling is relevant. Research areas with strong NEMS alignment include decarbonization pathways, electricity reliability and resource adequacy, hydrogen systems, electrification, energy security, fuel-market dynamics, and regional energy transitions.
Second, NEMS-based research can reach audiences beyond academic journals. Because NEMS is closely tied to the federal energy-policy analytical record, NEMS-based studies are more likely to be legible to agencies, Congressional staff, national laboratories, consulting firms, and policy organizations. Third, students who develop NEMS fluency gain experience with the same type of integrated energy-economy framework used in federal analysis, positioning them for careers at EIA, DOE, national laboratories, research institutions, and leading energy-consulting firms.
NEMS Connect: Bringing This Capability to Your Program
The challenge, historically, has been access. Standing up NEMS from scratch can take months and requires specialized modeling, software, data, and systems-integration expertise. NEMS Connect was built to close that gap. We help academic programs establish a functioning NEMS capability quickly and without starting from zero, so faculty and students can move directly into research design, scenario development, proposal support, and publishable analysis. The goal is not to outsource the research, but to help build durable NEMS capability within the institution.
The organizations that have developed NEMS capability have produced peer-reviewed research, informed federal decisions, and built modeling programs with lasting policy relevance. NEMS Connect’s role is to make that path more accessible for the next generation of academic and research institutions. To learn more or start a conversation, visit nemsconnect.com or reach out directly at [email protected].[21]
[1] Georgia Tech Climate and Energy Policy Laboratory (CEPL). “About CEPL.” Georgia Institute of Technology. https://www.cepl.gatech.edu/about. Accessed June 2026.
[2] Brown, Marilyn A. Faculty profile. Georgia Tech School of Public Policy. https://spp.gatech.edu/people/person/marilyn-a-brown. Accessed June 2026.
[3] Wilkerson, Jordan T., Danny Cullenward, Danielle Davidian, and John P. Weyant. “End Use Technology Choice in the National Energy Modeling System (NEMS): An Analysis of the Residential and Commercial Building Sectors.” Energy Economics, vol. 40, 2013, pp. 773–784. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.eneco.2013.09.023.
[4] Brown, Stephen P.A., Alan J. Krupnick, and Margaret A. Walls. “Natural Gas: A Bridge to a Low-Carbon Future?” RFF Issue Brief 09-11, December 2009. www.rff.org/documents/RFF-IB-09-11.pdf.
[5]Resources for the Future. “Toward a New National Energy Policy: Assessing Options That Can Succeed.” Press release. https://www.rff.org/news/press-releases/toward-a-new-national-energy-policy-assessing-options-that-can-succeed/.
[6] Krupnick, Alan J., Ian W.H. Parry, Margaret Walls, Tony Knowles, and Kristin Hayes, Toward a New National Energy Policy: Assessing the Options, https://media.rff.org/documents/RFF-Rpt-NEPI20Tech20Manual_Final.pdf. Specifically, RFF stated, “By using the same model with the same underlying assumptions, we can score different policies based on ‘apples-to-apples’ comparisons.”
[7] NRDC, “The Case Against New Offshore Oil and Gas Leasing on the Outer Continental Shelf,” https://www.nrdc.org/sites/default/files/case-against-new-offshore-oil-gas-leasing-ocs-ib.pdf
[8] U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Policy, “Office of Policy – National Energy Modeling System (OP-NEMS),” https://www.energy.gov/policy/office-policy-national-energy-modeling-system-op-nems
[9] Rhodium Group. “RHG-NEMS.” https://rhg.com/energy-climate/data-and-tools/rhg-nems/.
[10] Rhodium Group. Taking Stock 2025. https://rhg.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/Taking-Stock-2025.pdf.
[11] U.S. Energy Information Administration. Effects of Removing Restrictions on U.S. Crude Oil Exports. September 2015. https://www.eia.gov/analysis/requests/crude-exports/pdf/fullreport.pdf.
[12] Brown, Stephen P.A., Charles Mason, Alan Krupnick, and Jan Mares, “Crude Behavior: How Lifting the Export Ban Reduces Gasoline Prices in the United States.” March 2014. https://media.rff.org/documents/RFF-IB-14-03-REV.pdf.
[13] Vidas, Harry, Martin Tallett, et. al., The Impacts of U.S. The Impacts of U.S. Crude Oil Exports on Domestic Crude Production, GDP, Employment, Trade, and Consumer Costs. March 31, 2014. https://www.api.org/%7E/media/Files/Policy/LNG-Exports/LNG-primer/API-Crude-Exports-Study-by-ICF-3-31-2014.pdf.
[14] U.S. Government Accountability Office. Changing Crude Oil Markets: Allowing Exports Could Reduce Consumer Fuel Prices, and the Size of the Strategic Reserves Should Be Reexamined. GAO-14-807, September 2014. https://www.gao.gov/assets/gao-14-807.pdf.
[15] IHS Energy / IHS Economics, US Crude Oil Export Decision: Assessing the Impact of the Export Ban and Free Trade on the US Economy. 2014. https://atr.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/IHS-Report.pdf.
[16] NERA Economic Consulting, Economic Benefits of Lifting the Crude Oil Export Ban. September 9, 2014. https://www.nera.com/content/dam/nera/publications/2014/NERA_Crude_Oil_Export_Study_Sept_2014_FINAL.pdf.
[17] Ebinger, Charles K., and Heather L. Greenly. “Lifting the U.S. Ban on Crude Oil Exports: Let’s Use Data over Ideology.” Brookings Institution, September 16, 2015. https://www.brookings.edu/blog/planetpolicy/2015/09/16/lifting-the-u-s-ban-on-crude-oil-exports.
[18] U.S. Department of Energy, 2012 LNG Export Study, https://www.energy.gov/hgeo/2012-lng-export-study
[19] U.S. Energy Information Administration. “Effect of Increased Levels of Liquefied Natural Gas Exports on U.S. Energy Markets.” Commissioned by the U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Fossil Energy. January 2012; updated October 2014. https://www.eia.gov/analysis/requests/fe/pdf/lng.pdf.
[20] U.S. Department of Energy. “Energy, Economic, and Environmental Assessment of U.S. LNG Exports.” December 2024. https://www.energy.gov/sites/default/files/2024-12/LNGUpdate_SummaryReport_Dec2024_230pm.pdf.
[21} NEMS Connect. “NEMS in Practice.” https://www.nemsconnect.com.