Iran Wastes 25% of Primary Energy: Report

Iran’s parliament estimates that about a quarter of the country's primary energy is wasted. “There is no accurate information about the upstream sector or updated statistics, but Iran wasted 395.86mn barrels of oil equivalent energy in the fiscal year to March 2014, about 13.2% more than the previous year... The volume accounts for 25% of total primary energy production at the same year,” the 40-page parliamentary report said, adding that the energy wasted in converting oil products and gas to power, transmission and distribution sectors is huge.

As well as flaring 16.4bn m³/yr gas and the 12bn m³/yr gas lost in the grid in 2016, Iran also suffers from low efficiency of thermal power plants and 11% of the power is lost in the grid. “The country’s thermal power plants with 37.9% efficiency consumed 601665bn kilocalories energy (61.3bn m³ gas and 10.5bn litres of liquid fuels) during 2016. Thermal power plants also generated 265.2 TWh gross electricity,” according to the energy ministry’s official statistics.

Housing consumed about a third of the total generated electricity and a half the 204.5bn m³ gas that was processed last year. The energy waste in Iran’s housing sector is very high as well.

Though the report did not mention oil and gas statistics separately, the managing director of the fuel conservation company of Iran Ali Vakili said September last year that about 328mn barrels of oil equivalent of gas were wasted in Iran during a fiscal year to March 2014 and the situation continues.

Dalga Khatinoglu