In addition to the waste of resources and economic losses, environmental damage by gas flaring is widespread and significant. Since flaring the associated gas gives no added value in exchange for its pollution and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, it could be identified as a top priority for mitigation. Iran is the third gas flaring country after Russia and Iraq among those facing this issue, and is responsible for 12.1% of the world's gas flaring. While the necessity of developing a method for the precise estimation of flaring GHG emissions is clear, especially for evaluating the result of countries' efforts to meet their nationally determined contribution target, there are huge uncertainties and discrepancies in the values of emission factors among various data sources due to the lack of actual measurements of the volume and diversity of the composition of flare gas. This study aimed to fill the gap in providing authentic data on Iran's gas flaring GHG and air pollutant emissions by developing a model based on satellite data on flare volumes, gas compositions, and combustion equations. Our results revealed that based on 2021 data on flaring volume, Iranian gas flares are emitting approximately 50 million metric tons of CO 2 equivalent to the atmosphere annually, which could be reduced to 43 by only enhancing the flares' efficiency. It accounted for 5.5%-6% of the total GHG emissions of the country.

Increasing the power grid peak in the summer time causes power outages in industries and residential areas in Iran. The most obvious example of this issue is the power outages in the summer of 2018. Management of the demand-side is the most important strategy to reduce the grid peak due to the high cost of the development of the power plant capacity (500$ per kilowatt). In the present study, the effect of behavioral parameters in decreasing the power grid peak was identified. The behavioral simulation was done as an agent-based model using the raw data of the time-use survey (TUS) of the Statistics Center of Iran. 4228 urban households were surveyed, and the quality of people’s behavior was determined in each time step of 15 minutes during the day and night with 2 deterministic and stochastic approaches. In the stochastic approach, the Markov chain method was used. It showed that the power grid peak can only be reduced by 10% with behavioral flexibility and up to 25% by upgrading technology. In addition, based on the power deficit in 2018, 2000 megawatts of solar power capacity must be added to the network at peak times to meet grid demand.

Establishment of demand security is a key incentive to boosting oil and gas investments in countries, thus, making the study of demand security also critical. In the present research, the primary aim is to explore the capacity of Caspian Markets in establishing energy demand security in the Caspian region and investigate its impact on oil and gas exports from the region. Therefore, additional factors such as political issues, international support and geographical limitations should also be considered for the determination of energy demand security. To address this need, a hybrid index is proposed that characterizes energy demand security in the Caspian region. In this research, we have looked at the countries of the Caspian region as a collective identity and we have avoided looking at the particular country of the Caspian region. In this study, we have used analytic hierarchy process (AHP method) to make hybrid index (Caspian energy demand security index). Results produced by the hybrid index demonstrate the superior state of Iran and Russia’s swap markets in establishing demand security in the Caspian region in the years 2020 and 2030 when compared to the markets of China, European Union (EU) and India that follow, respectively. The exception to this trend is that in 2030, the European Union will demand more Caspian gas than China.