An Integrated Approach to the Realization of Saudi Arabia’s Energy Sustainability

Mohammed Siddig H. Mohammed, Abdulsalam Alhawsawi and Abdelfattah Y. Soliman
Additional contact information
Mohammed Siddig H. Mohammed: Department of Nuclear Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, King Abdulaziz University, P.O. Box 80204, Jeddah 21589, Saudi Arabia
Abdulsalam Alhawsawi: Department of Nuclear Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, King Abdulaziz University, P.O. Box 80204, Jeddah 21589, Saudi Arabia
Abdelfattah Y. Soliman: Department of Nuclear Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, King Abdulaziz University, P.O. Box 80204, Jeddah 21589, Saudi Arabia

Sustainability, 2020, vol. 13, issue 1, 1-15

Abstract: As system thinking is a recognized approach to the comprehension and realization of energy sustainability, this paper applies a holistic representation to the World Energy Trilemma Index (WETI) key indicators using Bayesian Belief Networks (BBN) to illuminate the probabilistic information of their influences in Saudi Arabia’s context. The reached realization is suggested to inform the policies to improve energy sustainability, and thus the country’s rank in the WETI. The analysis used two groups of learning cases, one used the energy statistics of the period from 1995 to 2019 to show the outlook of the Business as Usual path, and the other addressed the projected data for the period from 2018 to 2037 to investigate the expected impact of the new policies. For both BAU and new policies, the BBN calculated the improvement, stability, and declining beliefs. The most influential factors on energy sustainability performance were the electricity generation mix, CO 2 emissions, energy intensity, and energy storage. Moreover, the interlinkage between the influential indicators and their causes was estimated in the new policies model. A back-casting analysis was carried out to show the changes required to drive the improvement belief to 100%. The compiled BBN can be used to support structuring policymaking and analyzing the projections’ outcomes by investigating different scenarios for improvement probabilities of energy sustainability.

Keywords: Saudi Arabia; energy sustainability; world energy trilemma index; Bayesian Belief Network (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/13/1/205/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/13/1/205/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:13:y:2020:i:1:p:205-:d:469406

Access Statistics for this article

Sustainability is currently edited by Ms. Alexandra Wu

More articles in Sustainability from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().