Development and Application of an Energy Policy Analysis Tool for the Electricity and Water Sector of Abu Dhabi

Abstract

The commitment of the leadership of Abu Dhabi to environmental protection and energy security has lead to policy actions such as renewable energy targets, nuclear energy plans, building codes, appliance performance standards and awareness campaigns. As these policies are enacted and others are considered, there is a need for analysis tools that can assess their environmental and economic impacts. We develop a bottom-up demand and supply model for the electricity and water sector of Abu Dhabi to assist in policy assessment, by estimating carbon dioxide emissions and direct policy costs. The demand is disaggregated into subsectors to account for variations in end-uses and demographics. A dynamic method is developed to represent the transition of market share of efficient technologies, with a delay that depends on the relative costs of end-use technologies. A vintage turnover model, with explicit representation of equipment stock, is developed to account for gradual improvements in end-use. The supply side model emulates the cogeneration of electricity and water in Abu Dhabi and accounts for the impacts of variations in relative production of power and water on the electricity generation efficiency. The direct capital, operating and fuel costs of demand side equipment and supply side infrastructure are calculated to determine the policy costs. This research is a novel effort in modeling the unique features of Abu Dhabi’s electricity and water sector. It can be used to determine carbon dioxide emission savings and cost effectiveness of policies in various background scenarios. The tested policies include nuclear energy plan, renewable energy target, carbon capture and utilization, introduction of reverse osmosis desalination, tariff increase for electricity, water and gasoline and phase-out of inefficient equipment. The background scenarios are defined by exogenous variables such as population growth, fuel prices and technology improvement rates. It was found that, under our assumptions, nuclear energy plan and an increase in gasoline prices have the highest cumulative emission savings. Moreover, an increase in the tariff of electricity and water is the most cost effective policy.

Date of Award	2011
Original language	American English
Supervisor	Scott Kennedy (Supervisor)