Framing a novel holistic energy subsystem structure for water-energy-food nexus: A review of existing literature

Abstract

Water, Energy, and Food (WEF) are inseparably interrelated vital resources for every society's subsistence, sustainability, and development. Due to world population growth and economic developments, new environmental challenges that aggravate WEF resources' insufficiency have emerged. WEF nexus aims to examine how three WEF subsystems will interact and grow together. Most existing energy models do not fully account for all requirements and interactions between the WEF subsystems in the WEF nexus context. This paper frames a comprehensive structure for the energy subsystem within the WEF nexus system for Iran country. In the proposed framework, the energy subsystem's supply and demand side are formulated using both data and equations. The presented framework addresses most interactions between WEF subsystems in a dynamic and adaptive setting. It is shown that through analysis of binding interactions between WEF, different management scenarios can boost the flexibility of the supply and demand side of the energy subsystem. In addition, by incorporating this framework, the water subsystem will manage the allocated and consumed water on the supply side and arrive at the most desirable outcome for the water sector. Also, the optimal cropping pattern could be evaluated based on energy consumption.