Search

This paper provides an overview of the power sector development in Iran for the period 1984–2014. A retrospective optimization approach is applied to assess economic and environmental benefits that would have been achieved through appropriate long-term planning. MESSAGE, a systems engineering optimization model, is used for this analysis. Two alternative scenarios are defined to explore the impact of supply- and demand-side strategies on the power generation mix, fuel consumption and CO 2 emissions. The focus on the past choice of energy scenarios provides some insights for future scenario design. The results of the cost-optimal scenarios with international fuel prices are compared with the actual historical development. The findings indicate that the demand-side strategies are key drivers in achieving a low-carbon generation mix. Least-cost scenarios would favor much more combined cycle, renewable technologies and distributed electricity generation units, and less gas turbine than the actual transition pathway. Long-term energy planning would have reduced the cumulative total power system costs by $21-$90 billion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the relation among energy production, CO 2 emissions and economic growth of Iran with additional variables such as domestic and foreign investment, inflation, population density and agricultural land. Annual time series data is used for the period of 1971–2011 according to data availability. Our main results are as: (1) there is long run relationship among the variables. (2) CO 2 emissions has positive relation with economic growth. (3) energy production has positive effect on the economic growth of Iran. (4) Domestic investment has more contribution than the foreign investment in the explanation of economic growth. (5) Speed of adjustment shows that system will move to equilibrium path quickly. Diagnostic tests confirm the perfectness of the model. DOLS and FMOLS shows the similar results. Further, variance decomposition and cholseky impulse response function also show similar findings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this paper is to present a new tool for design of integrated energy systems. The initial choice of the energy system components and the way they should interact is a crucial decision which the outcome of the design heavily relies on. Use of a physical law (instead of engineering judgment) as the basis of the decision making is the main advantage of the proposed approach over conventional approaches for design of community scale energy systems. The methodology has been implemented for design of a district heating system for an existing district in arid region of Iran. The optimum level of interaction between the energy system components has been identified by employing an optimization algorithm seeking to minimize the overall cost of the energy system. Some of the relative merits of the optimum design comparing to the present energy system are 17% increase of the exergy efficiency, 10.8% reduction in the amount of CO2 production per capita and 2% reduction in overall energy related costs. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]