ENERGY ECONOMICS REVIEW
Year:2010 | Volume:7 | Issue:25|Papers Count:9

The economic and technical changes which followed the first oil market crisis led to the development of a vast number of models to analyze and forecast energy demand. The transportation sector is one of the most important consumers in the energy market, especially in the oil products market, and as such, has been subject to political interventions of governments. In this context, this paper models gasoline and diesel demand through a three-step maximization of utility function subject to expenditure constraints in each step. The model is constructed in a structural time series models framework, using data for the period 1358-86, and has an invisible trend component. After transforming the model to state-space form, we apply the Kalman filter algorithm to estimate the model through the maximum likelihood method. The results indicate that: 1. the trend is smooth 2. the process of movement is nonlinear. Estimated demand functions show that price elasticity of gasoline and diesel demand is less than one with short and long-run elasticity for gasoline of -0.24 and -0.3 respectively and for diesel at -0.2 for both. The income elasticity of demand for gasoline and diesel is respectively 1.71 and .84. Sensitivity of demand to vehicle ownership that use gasoline and diesel are 1.41 and 0.75 respectively.

Growing importance of energy resources in the development of economic processes and the necessity of utilizating these resources in an environmentally sound and sustainable manner renders the study of factors affecting energy consumption more important. The size and age structure of population are important factors that affect energy consumption, which have not been studied much.Therefore, this study uses the life cycle theory of consumption to explore and evaluate the impact of population size and age structure on energy consumption in Southwest Asian countries. In addition, models are estimated using the panel data method.The results of estimating models suggests that variables such as GDP per capita, populatibn size and the rate of urbanization, have a significant positive impact on energy consumption. In addition, the changing population age structure has a significant impact on energy consumption.Thus, knowledge of the consequences of changes in population size and age structure on energy consumption in Iran and other regional countries can facilitate future planning and policy making.

The region of Middle East and North Africa (MENA) is of great interest due to its energy reservoirs and special geopolitical conditions. The challenge of sustainable development in MENA has been debated amongst international organizations and researchers. The current paper tries to find the causality interactions among sustainability pillars, i.e. institutional, environmental, economic and social sustainability. For this purpose, data for 29 variables related to institutional, environmental, economic and social spheres for the 2000 - 2007 period were gathered and combined using Principal Component Analysis (PCA). Finally, a dynamic panel data model was constructed to test the causality between pillars. The results reveal the fact that economic development of MENA, which has relied upon environmental depletion, not only could not develop social and institutional dimensions, but caused their deterioration.

The current study aims to develop a model for forecasting volatility of crude oil price by using neural networks. To do so, time series prices of the two crude oil markets- of Brent and WTI - for the period of 12/05/1990 to 2/2/2010 are used. We have compared the results of four different volatility models including two Neural Networks (which differ in inputs, as explained in the article), GARCH (1, 1) and a hybrid model of NNs and GARCH. Comparison of predictions of these models using the Root Mean Square Error (RMSE) criteria reveals that the performance of the hybrid and both NN models is better than GARCH (1, 1) for both oil markets.

In this study, we consider the impacts of different factors on changes in energy consumption in Fars, Tehran and Isfahan Pegah Dairy Companies in the period 1375-1386. We use Logarithmic Mean Divisia Index (LMDI) techniques to decompose changes in energy consumption. In this method, changes in energy consumption are decomposed to three different factors: activity effect, structural effect and net intensity effect. The results show the structural effect in Fars, Tehran and Isfahan to be 184.06, 239.41 and 107.42 respectively and activity effect 414.18, 553.1 and 314.39 respectively. Both these effects are positive, while the net intensity effect is negative at -508.26, -680.08, and -347 respectively. This Result is useful for policymaking in the energy sector.

In this paper we assess one of the flexible aspects of the Kyoto protocol, namely the clean development mechanism and oppurtunites Iran may have to make use of funding opportunities offered by CDM for wind energy projects. The cost-benefit of a 10 MW wind power plant is assessed using comfar III method to compare use of CDM versus internally funding the project.The results show that given restrictions faced by Iran in accessing CDM resources, wind power is not feasible option.

Enhancing the energy efficiency of appliances is one of the most significant ways of energy saving. In this context, Iran's Energy Productivity Organization is putting in effect some policy measures to support desert cooler producers to improve the energy efficiency of their products. This paper undertakes a cost-benefit analysis of the alternative ways of Energy efficiency enhancement in desert coolers. To this end, we first investigate the feasibility of energy efficiency enhancement in desert coolers and then estimate the costs and benefits of higher energy efficiency. Our results indicate that with available technologies there are several feasible and cost effective ways to increase energy efficiency of desert coolers. In addition, payment of subsidy to cooler producers removes the financial barriers of producing efficient coolers but does not guarantee the adoption of more efficient technologies by them. Without considering other determining factors (such as quality R&D and increasing the consumers' awareness about the benefits of efficient appliances), the effectiveness of adopted policy measures will remain uncertain.

During the last decades, the Persian Gulf region has been through many crises. As a result, main oil consumers such as the USA have tried to reduce their dependence on the region due to security considerations. This has led to a production and export rate not consistent with the region's sizeable oil reservoir. However, as oil consumption increases over time, the Persian Gulf reservoir will become a more important source meeting the world's oil demand in the future. This situation creates important opportunities and challenges for the region. In this article three different scenarios are reviewed.