Integrated energy planning for transportation sector - A case study for Iran with techno-economic approach

Transportation sectors in developing countries suffer from some diseases that one of them is ever-increasing energy consumption. Integrated National Energy Planning (INEP) in transportation sector is a solution for these countries to alter their suboptimal pattern and rationalize their energy consumption. One of the INEP targets is determining optimal patterns of fuels and transportation technologies to satisfy future demand of freight and passenger transportation at the lowest cost levels. Following the above target, this paper is concerned with the optimal consumption pattern of fuels focusing on vehicle technologies within the next 25 years (up to 2029). Using Energy Flow Optimization Model-ENVironment (EFOM-ENV) model, various steps as designing of "Reference Energy System (RES)" of the model, data processing and scenario analysis are followed. Based on the modeling results, substitution of urban railroad technologies (subway, LRT and monorail), all of passenger CNG technologies (cars, buses and minibuses), rural railroad freight technologies (electrical, gas oil and LNG freight trains) and finally, CNG and LNG heavy and light trucks with current passenger and freight vehicle technologies are suggested. This scenario will decline fuel consumption by about 14% totally, that the most part of it belongs to gasoline and gas oil (24% and 17%, respectively). Total discounted cost of transportation system will decline from 806.20 to 691.74 billion dollars (14%) during the time horizon. (C) 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.