OK, I'll throw one suggestion in here. Template a model of a prototype country, the various factors, interconnections within the country, etc. Then instantiate it for each country around the globe - with decision making on a per country basis and interconnections between individual country elements overlaid on top.

That way not only can you easily built the model from bottom up in an OO way to take account of the different situations of each country (reserves, fuel usage, sunlight, philosophy) - you can put a human in charge of each countries options and play an energy 'wargame' relatively easily.

You just to the point!
This is very similar to the project plan we are developing. The idea was to start with a North America model because the USA model was already being developed and because being an ASPO-USA project it would be nice to have a North America module well defined and hopefully used in the US.

The next step, Phase 2, include the creation of 5 additional regional models, aggregated and showing the big picture.

Phase 3 would consist in the creation of national models.

Both national and regional models are based on a starting framework and are then customized to represent specific country issues/characteristics.

The best outcome of the whole project would be to have students working from all over the world collecting data and updating the models year by year.