A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Engineering of the Asian Institute of Technology, Bangkok, Thailand

Thesis (M.Eng.) - Asian Institute of Technology, 1977

The primary aim of this study is to make a forecast regarding nonrenewable energy resources consumption pattern. To attain this objective the study has been divided into two parts. In the first part, consumption of energy, derived from different sources for the last 25 years has been analyzed. These analysis includes the consumption of the World as a whole, developing countries of different regions and some other selected countries. It has been found that energy consumption has been growing exponentially in each case. But this exponential growth cannot continue for infinite period as the reserves are finite. Hence, an assumption has been made that, future energy consumption will depend upon the past trend, as well as the extent of remaining reserves. Using this assumption, an empirical model has been developed ·in the second part of this study, to forecast the future energy consumption of each individual primary energy source (including coal, oil, natural gas and nuclear energy). In order to retain the dynamic nature of the forecast, the system dynamics methodology has been used. Since the reserve estimates vary from estimator to estimator, four sets of reserve estimates were used for forecasting with this model. The model' s forecasts are finally compared with other forecast.