Using a grey system to predict motor vehicle CO_2 emission.

摘要

In this paper, a grey prediction model was used to capture the development trends of the number of motor vehicles, vehicular energy consumption and CO_2 emissions in Iran during the 2007-2021 period. We predicted these development trends under different scenarios of economic growth that work through the value of the development coefficient in the grey prediction model. The results showed that vehicle use, fuel consumption and CO_2 emissions within the transportation sector would continue to rise at the annual growth rates of 71.12% and 6.58% over the next 20 years for vehicle use and fuel consumption respectively and 6.45% over the next 10 years for CO_2 emission. Our simulations also concluded a lower bound of 30.3 and an upper bound of 34.2 million vehicles for the year 2021 depending on economic development profiles considered. The corresponding lower and upper bounds were 648 million and 743 million butts for fuel consumption and 274.6 and 299 million tons for CO_2 emissions respectively. The paper is a contribution to the development and use of the grey prediction models. It also can have useful policy implications for sustainable development in terms of setting CO_2 reduction priorities and mitigation strategies.