An approach to energy savings and improved environmental impact through restructuring Jordan's transport sector

This paper illustrates a new approach to forecast the potential energy savings and environmental impact of adopting energy efficient practices in the Jordanian transportation sector. This approach is based on Adaptive Neuro-Fuzzy Inference System (ANFIS) and the double exponential smoothing techniques. The ANFIS model has been developed using socio-economic and transport related indicators based on annual number of vehicles, vehicle owner level, income level, and fuel prices in Jordan. The double exponential smoothing technique has been used to forecast the different transport indicators to feed the developed ANFIS model in order to forecast the transport energy demand for the next two decades. The model has been validated using testing data and has showed very accurate results of 97%. The results show that the transport energy demand is expected to increase at % 4.9 yr(-1) from years 2011-2030. As an example of the energy efficiency improvement in the transportation sector, this paper examines potential benefits that can be achieved through the introduction of diesel cars to the passenger cars market in Jordan. Five scenarios are suggested for implementation and investigated using the new approach on the basis of local and global trends over the period 2011-2030. It is demonstrated that introducing diesel passenger cars can slow down the growth of energy consumption in the transportation sector resulting in significant savings in the national fuel bill. It is also shown that this is an effective and feasible option for cutting down CO2 emissions. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.