ENERGY ECONOMICS REVIEW
Year:2019 | Volume:15 | Issue:61|Papers Count:8

The purpose of this paper is to estimate oil products demand by the state-space model, taking into account the implications for price liberalization using the Kalman filter technique in the framework of a time-varying pattern. For this purpose, we use the data of the Energy Balance Sheet and the National Iranian Oil Refining and Distribution Company during the period of 1994-2017. Our model results indicate that the price elasticity of oil products varies during the studied period. Using three different scenarios, we consistently find that a 10% annual increase in oil product prices during the sixth development plan, leads to a decrease in the consumption of kerosene and fuel oil, while gasoline and gas oil consumption increases. We thus observe that while kerosene and fuel oil demand responds as expected to rising prices, the price sensitivity of demand for gasoline and gas oil declines. We observe that while the absolute value of the price elasticity of gasoline has fallen unexpectedly, the price elasticity of kerosene, fuel oil and gas oil have increased. Therefore, in order to encourage gasoline consumers to reduce their demand, the speed of price liberalization at the end of the sixth development plan has to be more than at the beginning of the program. However, the rate of price increase for kerosene, gas oil and fuel oil products has to decrease at the end of the program.

China, as a rising power, is an important market for fossil fuels. Meantime, the supply of fossil fuels depends on the geopolitical position of the exporting countries. The Persian Gulf and Central Asia are rich regions from an energy perspective. These regions have appropriate locations for supplying the Chinese market. Iran is located between the Persian Gulf and Central Asia. In this article, we try to compare the importance of the Persian Gulf and Central Asia and assess the Iranian position in this context. Based on the security complex theory, we attempt to answer the following questions: What is the position of the Persian Gulf and Central Asia in China's geopolitics of energy? What is Iran‘ s role as a sub-system of these areas in China's energy geopolitics? China tries to diversify its energy suppliers. However, the land secure route (Central Asia) is more advantageous than the dangerous maritime route (Persian Gulf). Therefore, Iran, as a country that links these two regions, has the potential to act as a link between the two regions, and as such increase China‘ s energy security.

According to released official statistics of greenhouse gas emissions in 2010, CO2, which is produced by fossil fuels and industrial processes, accounts for 65 percent of total global greenhouse gas emissions. The transport sector, in turn, is responsible for 23% of CO2 emissions. Researchers have been claiming that car manufacturers have not made significant efforts to reduce the pollution levels of their products, due significant government support policies, especially high tariff rates. It is also known that many developing countries impose high tariffs on car imports. In order to investigate the effect of tariffs on vehicle emissions, this paper analyzes the impact of vehicle tariffs on CO2 emissions of cars in a panel of 20 selected car importing countries during the years 2005-2013. The results indicate that increased vehicle tariff protection in the selected countries has led to an increase in carbon dioxide emissions. The China-South Korean policy model of tariff cuts, combined with environmentally supportive policies can be a good example for Iranian policymakers.

The issue of protecting the environment and preventing environmental pollution is one of the priorities of Iran‘ s economic and social development plans. The purpose of this paper is to analyze changes in the environmental effects of electricity generation, as electricity production patterns change, on production and welfare of households in Iran by using the social accounting matrix of 2011 and a computable general equilibrium model based on that framework. We evaluate four different policy scenarios based on the monetary value of the negative environmental effects of electricity generation. The results indicate that application of electricity generation‘ s negative externalities has a positive effect on economic growth and a negative effect on household welfare. Secondly, with the current structure of electricity generation, the application of external costs of electricity production will increase economic growth by 0. 0576 to 0. 0736 percent and will reduce household‘ s welfare by-1. 955 to-7. 171 percent. Thirdly, by changing the pattern of electricity generation in Iran and moving towards clean electricity production and reducing electricity production from fossil fuels, the effect of electricity generation externalities on economic growth and welfare will be reduced. According to the research results, if the share of electricity production from fossil fuels is reduced to 85%, the economic growth and welfare of the household will respectively vary from 0. 0553 to 0. 0727 percent and from-1. 733 to-6. 363 percent.

Funding by energy services companies is an efficient, new way of financing energy efficiency projects. An Energy Services Company (ESCO) is a company that designs, implements and finances energy efficiency improvement projects. Some of the services that these companies offer include developing, designing and financing energy efficiency projects, installing and maintaining energy efficiency projects and measuring and verifying the savings made from energy efficiency projects. The main difference between an Energy Services Company and consulting companies and equipment contractors is that the former will recover project implementation costs from project implementation revenues. Under these contracts, the Energy Services Company may, in addition to installing the equipment, maintain all or part of the new equipment during the life of the project and even 7 to 10 years after the completion of the project. This type of contract is the most attractive way to implement energy efficiency projects for companies with limited financial resources or unwilling to increase their financial obligations.

Coordinated expansion planning of power plants has always attracted the attention of power industry planners to arrive at the optimal mix that assures adequacy of energy supply. Here, we model the coordinates for expansion of electricity and gas networks while considering technical constraints, in order to minimize the total cost of investment and operation of electricity and gas networks for a single investor. Our study results indicate that we need to increase pipeline capacity in some areas in order to optimize our investment in the gas network foe Khorasan Razavi province. This additional investment only amounts to $ 19 million, which is insignificant compared to the total investment and operation cost of the gas network of $ 37. 19 billion. The study also indicates need for power generation capacity in specified areas. These results also indicate that the capacity of some transmission line should be increased. When we take into account security needs at the N-1 benchmark level to deal with potential disruptions in gas pipelines, the electricity network would need to install around 3200 MW new generation units in different parts of the network to be robust against pipelines outages. While without considering the N-1 criterion for pipelines, the additional power generation capacity needed is only 2400 MW.

In this study, we used the Shephard distance functions to analyze environmental technical efficiency and decomposition of Changes in CO2 Emissions to Five factors: ― technical efficiency change effect, technical change effect, and emission indexes associated with capital, labor and energy ― in 28 provinces of Iran for the period 2003-2013. Our study used panel data and data envelopment analysis technique and covered both Emission reduction and increase. Our findings show that Iran has not had an effective environmental performance during the period under review. The average technical efficiency and environmental performance in selected provinces during the period in question is 0. 796. Further, the results of decomposition indicate that 1)The most important positive factor in Emission reduction in Iran was emission index associated with labor with an average of 0. 6256 2) Emission index associated with energy was The most important factor in Emission increase with an average of 1. 0182. 3) changes in technical efficiency have had a positive role in emission reduction, given a value greater than 1.

in this study, the effect of oil price shocks on the employment of selected oilexporting and oil-importing countries was investigated. To this end, the annual data for the period 2000-2014 and the econometric models of Christiano and Fitzgerald Filter, Bakstr-King Filter have been used to calculate the oil price shocks and the panel data model is used to estimate the model and data analysis. The results of this study can be summarized as follow: Firstly, in the exporting countries, the employment is affected by oil price shocks and is influenced by it directly. Hence, in these countries as the oil price increases, the oil revenues rises and the employment increase consequently, and vice versa. There fore these countries should utilize the opportunity of oil price increase for the economic prosperity and the rise of employment. Since lower oil price leads to the decrease of employment, therefor oilexporting countries should deal with the negative effects of lower oil price over the employment and to consider the necessary thoughts about them. Secondly, the oil price shocks in oil-importing countries have not high significant impact on employment, so the changes and fluctuations in the employment of understudy countries had been affected by other factors. Thus, the impact of the oil price fluctuations on employment depends on the place of the countries in world oil market as supplier or demander.