Matar, Walid

28 April 2024

In its latest release of the Global Methane Tracker, the International Energy Agency (IEA) imputes methane intensity for each oil and gas producer for 2023.

19 April 2020

The Joint Organisations Data Initiative (JODI) and the Saudi Electricity Company (SEC) have just released energy use data for 2019. This insight provides an up-to-date estimation of how fossil fuel incentives have changed in 2019 compared with 2009.

07 December 2023

Measuring and monitoring greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions are crucial to address climate change and fulfill Paris Agreement objectives. This paper explores the potential of satellite technology in measuring and tracking CH4, CO2, and N2O emissions in Saudi Arabia, collaborating with en...

13 November 2023

e). In this regard, this paper contributes a modeling view of the climate-related effects of various energy policies on the Saudi energy system. The baseline entails the continued progression of current domestic policies ...₂ emissions equal to those displayed in the announced policies.

17 January 2023

After cement production in Saudi Arabia surged in the first half of the 2010s due to the country’s rapid economic development, it has slowed measurably in recent years as economic growth has declined. This is shown in Figure 1, along with the evolution of the Kingdom’s real gross do...

22 March 2021

This study explores the potential effects of real-time electricity pricing on the operations of Saudi Arabia’s power generation sector. The Kingdom currently sets fuel prices for power utilities at levels that suppress the costs of power generation. However, this analysis prov...  

06 January 2021

The advent of American shale oil and its prospects for continued production growth have raised concerns about whether oil refineries can handle the increasingly lighter crude oil supply. To provide a perspective on this issue, we run a global oil refining model for the years from 201...

14 September 2020

It has been shown in the literature that, in aggregate, actual household energy efficiency adoption is less than would be expected economically. Energy economists and policy analysts have described this phenomenon as the ‘energy efficiency gap.’ There could be myriad reasons for this...

24 March 2020

This paper expands on a previously-presented methodology that merges the physical properties of energy with microeconomic principles: The physical side of the model informs how much electricity is used to satisfy services that people desire, while the microeconomic side imposes a uti...

08 December 2019

Saudi Arabia expects to double its natural gas production within the next decade. This increased domestic supply is expected to meet the demand for gas from Saudi Arabia’s industrial development and, most importantly, to displace liquid fuels in its electricity sector. Given the stro...

14 February 2019

The study calibrates the physical component for a dwelling in Saudi Arabia. Domestic electricity tariffs in the – tiered – progressive pricing structure were partially raised in 2018. In addition to those increases, the response to other electricity pricing schemes is analyzed: time-...

29 July 2017

The Saudi electricity sector buys fuel and sells electricity at prices administered by the government. In this analysis, we assume that fuel prices are deregulated — priced at their marginal values or international equivalents — and use a long-term static version of the KAPSARC Energ...

28 November 2016

Intermittent generation from wind or photovoltaics (PV) imposes a cost on the power systems in which they are deployed. These costs vary regionally due to different fuel costs and ramping flexibility of existing grid capacities. With 2015 as a reference year, we examine the costs of ...

26 July 2016

Empirical estimates of fuel demand changes to price variation are based on historical consumption and prices, and can be applied as a single point estimate to a wide range of price movements. However, if fuel prices are set outside the boundaries of historical changes, policymakers m...

24 December 2015

Almost all of Saudi Arabia’s electric power generation is fueled by oil and gas. Plans for future capacity envisage nuclear and renewables supplementing this mix and freeing up oil for other revenue-generating opportunities. Coal-fired generation has been promoted in some Gulf Cooper...

07 June 2015

External observers worry about whether Saudi domestic consumption of oil will crowd out exports. This is based on simple extrapolations which suggest that in a little more than 20 years Saudi Arabia may become a net importer of hydrocarbon fuels. However, our research does not suppor...

06 March 2015

Many countries have promoted energy efficiency and conservation in the residential sector due to its significant contribution to total demand. This paper discusses some of the wider implications of more efficient households on the overall energy system. Various efficiency options, su...

07 March 2014

Saudi Arabia aims to reduce the growth of its energy demand. This paper outlines an approach that could help the country to reduce substantively its current fuel consumption and could result in a net economic gain without increasing current end consumer prices and while maintaining p...

30 October 2024

Decision makers need high-quality information on the level of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions to take effective climate actions. Of the GHGs, methane can be particularly difficult to measure. Huge discrepancies exist in methane emission estimates at the global, national, and corporate...

25 March 2025

To integrate or not to integrate petrochemicals – that is the question posed by this paper for Saudi Arabian oil refineries. The viability of combining domestic oil refining and petrochemical activities is investigated using an energy system model for Saudi Arabia. Two scenarios are ...

11 February 2025

Producing construction materials requires a great amount of energy, and in Saudi Arabia, this production currently entails the use of substantial amounts of liquid fuels. Liquid fuels are mostly sold at below-market prices domestically, and thus result in large opportunity costs for... 

18 September 2023

Index decomposition analysis (IDA) has been used to study energy use movements since the 1980s. Methods at that time consisted primarily of multiplying factors that ultimately yielded the aggregate quantity, such as energy use. IDA is a straightforward way for researchers to examine ...

13 January 2020

Fuel prices in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia have historically been below international market values. This has stimulated rapid growth in primary energy demand. The Kingdom’s natural gas demand has now outstripped its domestic production, forcing the government to impose rations on co...

01 September 2019

has just published a paper, “Measuring the effects of price controls using mixed complementarity models” (2019). It detailed a series of innovative modeling approaches developed by KAPSARC researchers over the last six years. The models were used to study the effects of administered...

03 November 2024

Saudi Arabia aims to displace fuel oil in its electricity system and industry. Such a move ­will impact the operation of its oil refineries, and this commentary explores ­these potential effects.

10 September 2024

The price-gap method is popularly applied to estimate energy subsidies, and it simply involves calculating the difference between the market and domestic prices of a good multiplied by the quantity consumed. In the case where subsidies impose foregone revenue rather than direct costs...

11 May 2023

KAPSARC has developed an optimization model to characterize the distribution of oil products after the refining stage. The model ensures that the demand for any group of refined oil products is simultaneously met while minimizing the social costs associated with the distribution syst...

05 November 2017

The purpose of this study is to assess policy-relevant effects of incorporating a more proper representation of electricity transmission in multi-sector national policy models. This goal is achieved by employing the KAPSARC Energy Model (KEM), which is the first publicly available la...

30 September 2024

Mathematical models provide quantitative analyses that can inform policy decisions. We argue that two attributes can support models’ adoption by policymakers: an intuitive graphical interface and active engagement between modelers and policymakers.

04 April 2023

A country’s national income is defined as the total market value of its output. The most used measure for national income is gross domestic product (GDP). One way to estimate GDP for a country is to sum its government consumption, private consumption, investment, and exports minus i...

27 December 2020

“A country’s national income is defined as the total market value of its output. The most used measure for national income is gross domestic product (GDP). One way to estimate GDP for a country is to sum its government consumption, private consumption, investment, and e...    

17 October 2018

Ghada Abdulla, Hisham Akhonbay, Abdullah Al-Badi, Walid Ali, Odeh Al-Jayyousi, Imtenan Al-Mubarak, Maha Alsabbagh, Omar Al-Ubaydli, Moiz Bohra, Sylvain Cote, Nasreddine El-Dehaibi, Amro Elshurafa, Bassam Fattouh, Stephen Gitonga, Steve Griffiths, Marwan Khraisheh, Walid...    

20 October 2017

20 October 2017

20 November 2015

20 October 2013