JOURNAL OF ENERGY PLANNING AND POLICY RESEARCH
Year:2016 | Volume:2 | Issue:3 |Papers Count:8

The main target of this research is providing a decision making model to identify the target groups for energy subsidy reform using artificial neural network approach.Family expenditures on electricity, gas, telephone and cell phone are used as the inputs to the artificial neural network model and the Probit model developed as a benchmark. The sample being studied in this research are divided into two groups: eligible and non-eligible to receive subsidies. The artificial neural network used in the research is the multilayer perceptron which has used the Levenberg-Marquardt method to train the data. Acooring to the results, there exists a statistically meaningful relation between the families’ expenditure on the chosen services and their belonging to different income levels as eligible or non-eligible groups for receiving subsidies. Moreover, families with higher expenditures on selected services have higher incomes. The outcome of this study reveals that the two models used for classifying the target groups have similar results in classifying the families into eligible and non-eligible groups for receiving subsidies.

The relationship between natural gas and crude oil prices is one of the most important topics for gas pricing. In conventional gas pricing methods, gas prices are often formulated as a crude oil or oil products prices. In recent years establishment of regional hubs lead to prevalence of gas-to-gas pricing mechanism, in which relative prices of oil and gas do not follow the pricing rules. Moreover, in the wake of unconventional gas supplies in North America and widening the differential between oil and gas prices, some debate appeared on the possibility of decoupling gas prices from being oil indexed. Under these circumstances, the question that always arises is that despite short-term fluctuations in relative prices of oil and gas, is there a long-term relationship between natural gas prices and oil price? In this paper, short-term and long-term dynamics between gas prices and oil prices in four major regional markets (North America, the UK, Asia and Europe) have been studied. The findings of the study indicate that although price of natural gas is decoupled from oil in North America, there is a significant co-integration relationship between oil and gas prices in UK and European markets as well as Asian markets.

This paper investigates relationship of 16 variables on economic growth in Iran, using Bayesian Model Averaging (BMA) and annual time series data from 1961 to 2014. “Inclusion probability” indicates that investment ratio, population growth rate (with a negative sign), imported capital good growth, labor force growth, and imported intermediate good growth take the first to fifth rank regarding their effects on economic growth respectively. The relationship between energy consumption and growth in non-oil production due to the low probability of this variable in the model is insignificant. Thus saving energy policies are not a threat to economic growth in Iran.

Building sector with a share of 40 percent in energy consumption plays a major role in energy consumption. The objective of this study is to decrease residential buildings energy consumption and substitute renewable energy for fossil fuel in order to supply energy for the buildings in a framework of zero energy neighborhood units in Qazvin. The method applied in this study is based on analytical descriptive method, causal study method and simulation. Results show that thermal insulation and heat capacity of materials can lead to 32 percent energy savings. In addition, canopy at the rate of 2.5 percent, and natural ventilation at a rate of 17 percent can decrease building annual energy consumption. Reaching zero energy under study will require 848 256-watt photovoltaic units , as well as 24 solar collectors in the 32 residential blocks.

The obvious fact is that economic growth and productivity, will reduce energy intensity. In the literature of industrial development, structural industrial energy imrovement can increase the growth rate, through transfer of factors from low productivity sectors to high productivity sectors. In this study, we try to identify the factors affecting the industrial structure and the impact of each of these factors on the intensity of energy in Iranian industries. The results show a positive effect for domestic R&D expenditures labor and energy prices and negative impacts for human capital, labor, physical capital accumulation and share of private ownership on energy intensity. The effect of trade openness index is meaningless.

Despite accessibility, affordability and cost effectiveness of new technologies that increase energy productivity in the residential sector, consumers are still reluctant to energy conservation. The resistance against energy efficiency can be attributed to human factors and social barriers. Human barriers related to energy savings includes insufficient information, uncertainty lack of appropriate solutions and wrong beliefs about productivity. In this paper through interviews and questionnaire and using factor analysis, we try to identify main barriers and solutions to residential buildings energy conservation in Iran.

After the privatization of the petrochemical industry in recent years in the country, pricing of natural gas as a raw material for use in this industry is one of the government key decisions in relation to this natural wealth. Privatization and energy subsidy reform act has increased the necessity of paying more attention to the determination of feedstock prices for petrochemical industry. The paper starts by a Financial analysis to analyze the current situation of a sample petrochemical unit, Zagros co. then we use Delphi method, to identify deficiciencies of ongoing pricing method based on interrious with selected experts. This study identifies Deficiencies of feed stock pricing in Iran’s petrochemical industry.

This study investigates the influence of wind energy consumption on GDP growth and CO2 emission in 14 Asian countries. For the period 2005 to 2013 The results of FMOLS model and ECM model indicate that wind energy consumption has positive long run effect on GDP growth and no long run effect on CO2 emission. The Granger causality reveale that in CO2 model there is bi-directional relationship between GDP growth and CO2 emission, and between CO2 emission and urban population. there is a uni-directional relationship between GDP and urban population, too.