فصلنامه مطالعات اقتصاد انرژی
پیاپی 73 (تابستان 1401)

Emissions of more than three-quarters of greenhouse gases by the energy sector have affected climate change in various economic, political and social sectors. Climate change is affecting energy consumption, including natural gas. This article deals with the future of natural gas consumption in the country with regard to climate change until 2030 using a combined approach of econometrics and scenario building. Natural gas consumption is projected to reach 337,113 million cubic meters by 2030 within framework of the baseline scenario, which is based on the continuation of the current trend and the results of the censored regression model (Tobit). Also, the future research of natural gas consumption in the form of eight scenarios, based on two key drivers of changes in temperature and price of natural gas, as well as the assumption of stability of trends: GDP, electricity consumption, energy intensity, consumption of petroleum products, population, has been examined. Findings show that a 4 degree increase in temperature will increase natural gas consumption to 358669 million cubic meters (with 78.7% growth compared to 2016 and 46.8% growth compared to 2020) in 2030, but rising natural gas prices could moderate that trend to some extent.

The success of long-term gas sales contracts is largely related to the ability of the seller and the buyer to adapt the terms of the contract to their conditions, infrastructure, facilities and market. If the buyer's demand changes from season to season and seasonally fluctuates, problems and complexities arise for the seller and he may need to provide the excess capacity to produce, refine and transport gas that only used for a few monthswhich will eventually make gas prices more expensive. The present article seeks to examine the strategies for managing seasonal fluctuations in buyer demand and subsequently increase the stability of the contract. Findings indicate that unlike the method of creating excess capacity by the seller, the use of non contractual methods such as finding counter-swing customers, providing maximum buyer gas demand from a second source and gas storage or contractual methods and optimal use of quantitave terms is effective in managing the buyer's seasonal demand. These solutions, while fulfilling the maximum buyer demand for gas, will not only not increase the price of gas, but will also increase the durability of gas sales agreements.

Short-term and long-term relationship between exchange rate, oil price and spot gas price of three regional gas markets was investigated using and estimating the Vector Autoregressive model. There is a significant and long-term relationship between variables.Short-term interactions of variables with Granger causality test One-year interaction of variables with intervals of one to twelve months is studied and in order to solidify the results, the Wald test is repeated in estimating the Vector Autoregressive. The results show that the spot gas price is always influenced by the price of oil, and the US gas price is indifferent and immune to exchange rate fluctuations with a 12-month delay. But there is always a one-way connection from the US gas market to the Asian and European gas markets. The US regional market has always been affected by exchange rate fluctuations in other markets, but its oil and gas market has been protected by increased oil and gas production and the implementation of foreign exchange and banking policies.

Achieving economic growth and sustainable development with increasing the environmental quality are principal goals of the Iranian economy. Identifying and ranking factors affecting the pollution environment is the first step to reaching this goal. Due to the importance of the subject, the present study has decomposed the share of factors affecting environmental pollution in Iran during 1982-2018 using the Shapley-Owen value approach. The Shapley-Owen approach, in addition to calculating the explanatory variables share, also computes the constituent components contribution of each explanatory variable from the dependent variable. Findings of the Shapley technique show that energy consumption has the largest share of environmental pollution. The results of Owen's method also indicate that energy consumption in the transportation and the agricultural sector contains the highest and the lowest contribution of total environmental pollution, respectively. Expansion of urbanization, an uncontrolled increase of non-standard vehicles, low quality of consumed fuels along with abundant and cheap natural resources, trade sanctions against the country, imposition of tariffs on the import of machinery, and lack of awareness and proper education about the consequences of harmful pollution has led to an accelerating increase in energy consumption in various economic sectors and, consequently, an increase in the environmental pollution in the country.

In this study, the idea of utilizing hydrothermal technologies in the power supply portfolio is explored considering the necessity of power security, environmental protection, supplying the ever-growing power demand, and the opportunity to export hydrocarbon resources. The main goal is to determine a minimum guaranteed purchase price from a policy perspective and a confidence interval for sensitive technical and economical parameters from an investment perspective, in a way that electricity generation from hydrothermal resources would be feasible. The research methodology is an innovative combination of Net Annual Worth (NAW), Internal Rate of Return (IRR), and Benefit-Cost Ratio (BCR) indexes with California Electricity Community (CEC) in aims to consider all macroeconomic, technical-economic, and emission parameters of power plants in engineering economics calculations. The research data was collected from the strategic plans of the energy ministry and the related case studies and the year 1398 was considered as the base year. The results of this study from a policy perspective based on the power supply development guideline of REN21 suggest that in the current situation, where subsidized fuels are provided for power plants and the cost of external effects is not considered when calculating the cost of electricity, the hydrothermal technologies in the sixth to twelfth position in the power supply portfolio. Nevertheless, in the developed context of the electricity supply industry, where the power plants are supplied fuels with export prices and the cost of external effects is considered in the calculation of the cost of electricity, the hydrothermal technologies gain the second to sixth position in the power supply portfolio, higher than conventional technologies, such as steam, gas, and combined cycle. Results from an investment perspective show that the minimum guaranteed purchase price should be 6,705 Rials per Kw/h in order for the investment in this field to be feasible for the private section. Hence, considering the current minimum guaranteed purchase price, electricity generation in this way is feasible, only if the design and construction of the main equipment, such as the hydrothermal turbine are done locally and independent on the currency rate fluctuations.

The oil price and the real effective exchange rate (REER) are two important variables affecting OPEC countries politics and economy. Despite the fact that the existing theoretical literature confirms the relationship between oil price and the exchange rate (Dollar), there is no consensus about the direction of causality between these two variable. Also, statistical data shows that there is a synchronization between oil price changes and exchange rate. According to the existing literature and empirical literature, the question is whether there is a relationship between the price of OPEC crude oil and the real effective exchange rate in these countries. This research uses OPEC monthly data for the period of 01: 2003 to 11: 2017 and the AECM approach to examine the relationship between the real effective exchange rate in OPEC member countries and OPEC oil prices. To this end, the TAR and MTAR models have been used to examine the asymmetric cointegration effects between variables. Multiple structural breaks were also considered as dummy variables in the DOLS model to determine the long-term relationship. According to the findings of this study, there is a cointegration between variables and this cointegration has been confirmed in symmetric and asymmetric states. Dollar is weakly exogenous and the long- run relationship between the REER and oil prices is negative and asymmetric, but in the short run there is no relationship between these two variables.

According to the proposed regulation of the Ministry of Petroleum to support downstream petrochemical industries with emphasis on completing the value chain of methanol / propylene and due to the significant overcapacity of methanol production units in Iran and the uncertain trend in methanol price in global markets, methanol downstream projects has attracted the attention of many investors. In this paper, three proposed technologies in methanol downstream are considered including methanol to propylene (MTP), methanol to olefin (MTO) and gas to olefin (GTO). They have been analyzed technically and economically and the results have been compared with each other and with the methanol production plant alone. In addition, using scenario analysis and Monte Carlo simulation method, it has studied different price scenarios for inputs and products of the mentioned technologies. The results show that in the scenario of maintaining the current situation and considering the inflationary conditions in the world commodity markets during the last two years, all the mentioned plants will have suitable conditions from an economic point of view. Moreover, with the completion of the methanol value chain, the amount of internal rate of return of these projects and their net present values has increased significantly.

Despite the presence of 90% of double-fuel taxis (gasoline + CNG) in the urban taxi fleet, fuel consumption choices are more dependent on pricing policies and factors such as gasoline subsidies and quotas, and with the slightest change in fuel rates and quotas, use natural gas fuel. . Impact and challenge fuel management in the public transport fleet. The main purpose of this is to identify ways to establish a sustainable structure of natural gas consumption in the fuel of urban taxis with special management conditions in Iran. After reviewing previous research and interviewing experts and specialists, dynamic hypotheses were determined from the fuzzy Delphi method and based on it, the causes-root and flow-accumulation operating system dynamics method were developed and extracted. The results of this study show that if you buy and replace worn-out gasoline and conventional two-burner taxis with a two-burner car based on a gas engine in a period of 20 years (from 1400 to 1420), natural gas consumption will increase by 24% and sustainably.