Long-term optimization of United Arab Emirates energy future: Policy implications

This paper presents an evaluation of future energy-supply strategies for the United Arab Emirates (UAE) power sector. This paper also identifies the prospects for the further economic development of the country while addressing energy security issues and mitigating environmental impacts. It explores technology choices to meet the future demand in the most cost efficient way based on existing and innovated technologies. The analyses are done for UAE energy system applying MARKAL model. Different policies such as a CO2 emission reduction constraint, renewable energy production targets, and subsidy minimization through international benchmarking for domestic gas prices are applied for this analysis. The results show that the alternative policy scenarios directly allocate clean advanced and renewable technologies to generate electricity. The alternative policy scenarios reduce CO2 emissions in power sector. The simulation results from model show that alternative sustainable energy development policies expected total system cost is not significantly higher. The cumulative system cost increases, relative to the base scenario by 9% and 11% for CO2 emission reduction and renewable target production scenarios, respectively. Use of primary resources to meet the demand is reduced and the supply of primary energy resources is diversified. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.