The Projection of Energy Consumption with Emphasize on Demographic Characteristics: Comparing Prospect of Energy Consumption in Iran with Other ECO Countries

The projection of energy consumption is an important issue for consumption management and responding to energy needs. The objective of this paper is to predict trends of energy consumption for Iran over the years of 2013 to 2030, and to compare it with that of Economic Cooperation Organization (ECO) member states. To meet this goal, the data from ECOSTAT and UNPD and method of GMDH neural network has been used. In its modeling, demographic factors (total population and urbanization) and economic factors (GDP per capita) were employed as inputs. To examine the effect of total population on energy consumption trends, the projections was made based on three alternative demographic scenarios. The projections indicated that energy consumption in Iran will be increased significantly until the year 2030, however, the patterns of increase of energy consumption are considerably different under each scenario. Although energy consumption for other ECO member states, particularly for Pakistan and Turkey increases, but the amount of increase is much lower than that of Iran.