A linear goal programming model for urban energy-economy-environment interaction

Abstract

The last decade has witnessed a growing concern with the adequacy of energy resources and with the quality of the physical environment. This concern stems from such factors as the unrelenting growth of energy use, the end of an era of abundant and cheap energy, adverse environmental effects of economic growth, and the increasing participation of governments in decisions pertaining to energy supply and environmental protection. Owing to the fact that a significant part of the shortfalls in environmental quality in contemporary societies derives from energy use, issues of “trade-off” between additional energy supplies and environmental quality frequently arise. In the context of this intimate association between the economy, environment and energy, there has been a growing awareness that policy decisions on economic, environmental and energy-related issues need to be placed in the broader framework of conflicting political priorities. These include: meeting energy demands for sectoral end-uses; maximizing energy conservation; checking air pollution; reducing the annualized economic cost of utilization of energy systems; reducing import of energy from neighbouring regions; and increasing the capacity for utilization of domestic appliances and different modes of transport. Multi-objective decision models arise from the need to take into account the presence of a wide variety of conflicting objectives in ordinal ranking or priorities depending on the degree of importance one wants to assign to each objective. The basic problem related to the existence of multiple objectives is the fact that decisions are normally interdependent, so that any decision to increase production has a corresponding impact on energy consumption, pollution emission and vice versa. Pollutants considered for this study are carbon monoxide (CO), nitrogen oxides (NO x), sulphur dioxide (SO 2) and suspended particulate matter (SPM) which are the emissions caused by combustion or automation. This paper provides a comprehensive and systematic analysis of energy and pollution problems interconnected with the economic structure, by using a multi-objective sectoral end-use model for addressing regional energy policy issues. The multi-objective model proposed for the study is a “linear goal programming (LGP)” technique of analysing a “reference energy system (RES)” in a framework within which alternative policies and technical strategies may be evaluated. The model so developed has further been tested for the city of Delhi (India) for the period 1985–1986, and a scenario analysis has been carried out by assuming different policy options.