Assessing the environmental impacts of energy price reform in Iran (Case Study: Isfahan)

Abstract

The present paper studies impacts of changes of oil and its products’ prices and economic growth on quality of the environment in Iran. Therefore, emission of carbon monoxide is regarded as the pollution index of environment and an Auto-Regressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) econometric model has been used to analyze relations among the variables. The required data has been exploited through energy balance sheets and the related statistical letters. It is considered seasonally for a selected region in Iran (Isfahan province) during the period 2005-2014. Obtained results demonstrate regional economic growth variable as well as population has a significant impact on quality of the environment in Iran under the current regional conditions and according to pollution haven theory. Moreover, it has been led to increased pollution of the environment. Also, changing and increasing of oil and its products' prices have had a significant and decreasing impact on regional environmental pollution in Iran. It is in a way that Iranian targeted subsidy plan has had a decreasing impact on pollution after one period. Given to the obtained coefficients through model estimation, however, this factor could not neutralize the impact of the other two variables.

DOI: 10.5901/mjss.2016.v7n4p66