Market players in the energy sector transition are heterogeneous, have bounded rationality and are influenced by their own past failures, as well as imitating the successes of their competitors. However this agent heterogeneity and complex behaviour in investment choices is not taken into account in traditional energy-economy models used to inform energy sector policies. By using BRAIN-Energy, an agent-based model of investment in electricity generation, which enables to study the impact of actors’ heterogeneous characteristics on the transition pathways of the UK, German and Italian electricity sectors, this paper shows how historic path-dependency in investment choices displaces low-carbon in favour of high-carbon investments under a weak regulatory framework. By contrast, imitation can help the diffusion of renewable technologies, through a self-reinforcing positive feedback when government subsidies to low-carbon investments are in place.

能源行业转型中的市场参与者是异质的，具有有限的理性，并受自己过去的失败以及模仿竞争对手的成功的影响。但是，在用于为能源部门政策提供信息的传统能源经济模型中，并未考虑这种代理异质性和投资选择中的复杂行为。通过使用基于代理的发电投资模型BRAIN-Energy，该模型可以研究参与者的异质性特征对英国，德国和意大利电力部门过渡路径的影响，从而说明历史路径的依赖性在监管薄弱的框架下，低碳投资取代了低碳，而倾向于高碳投资。相比之下，模仿可以帮助推广可再生技术，