Anwar Gasim

Research Fellow

  • Primary Program Climate and Sustainability
  • Research Interests Energy Demand, GHG Emissions, Energy Pricing, Energy Subsidies, Energy Efficiency, Carbon Pricing and Carbon Markets

Biography

Anwar is an energy and environmental economist with a strong engineering background. He leads a cross-functional team on the project titled “Modeling Energy Demand, Emissions, and the Impacts of Energy Price Reform.” This project includes studies on elasticities, emissions forecasting, the economic and environmental impacts of reforms, and understanding what leads to successful energy policy outcomes. He is also involved in multiple studies on carbon markets. Anwar’s research has been published in leading journals and has been picked up by numerous media publications, such as the Saudi Gazette and Arab News. His work has supported key advisory engagements with the Saudi energy sector.

Anwar is currently wrapping up a Ph.D. from UCL in Sustainable Resources (with a sub-specialization in Economics). He holds an M.Sc. in Electrical Engineering from KAUST and a B.Eng. in the same field from the University of Liverpool.

Publications

See all Anwar’s publications
  • Discussion papers
  • Data Insight
  • Instant Insights
  • Commentaries
  • KAPSARC journal articles
  • External journal article
Modeling Industrial Energy Demand in Saudi Arabia and Understanding Its Drivers

Modeling Industrial Energy Demand in Saudi Arabia and Understanding Its Drivers

In 2016 Saudi Arabia’s industrial (or manufacturing) sector accounted for 30.3% of total final energy consumption (IEA 2018a). When non-energy use (mainly feedstock for the petrochemical subsector) is included, the industrial sector᾽s share of total final energy consumption rises to over 50%.

3rd December 2019
Welfare Implications of the Rebound Effect From More Energy-Efficient Passenger Cars

Welfare Implications of the Rebound Effect From More Energy-Efficient Passenger Cars

Improving the energy efficiency of passenger cars makes it cheaper to drive, allowing motorists to take to the roads more frequently. This additional driving, which offsets some of the expected energy savings from energy efficiency, is known as the rebound effect and is perceived negatively. This paper undertakes a cost-benefit analysis of the rebound effect following an energy efficiency improvement in passenger cars for 100 countries.

30th October 2017
Gasoline Demand, Pricing Policy and Social Welfare in Saudi Arabia

Gasoline Demand, Pricing Policy and Social Welfare in Saudi Arabia

In the face of low international oil prices, countries in the Gulf Cooperation Council recently implemented fuel price reform across a number of sectors. Saudi Arabia, for example, announced in December 2015 an increase in the gasoline price. We undertook a welfare analysis in this paper to estimate the net gain in social welfare that resulted from this price increase.

12th March 2017
Policymakers Guide to the Various Ways of Calculating Energy Productivity

Policymakers Guide to the Various Ways of Calculating Energy Productivity

The existence of multiple approaches to calculating energy productivity, with its resulting diverse outcomes, makes it difficult to draw meaningful comparisons between economies and monitor their progress over time. To understand better the implications of this, we conducted a systematic in-depth survey of the various approaches.

13th June 2016
Embodied energy in trade: What role does specialization play

Embodied energy in trade: What role does specialization play

In global discussions aimed at limiting greenhouse gas emissions, the national targets set by governments are tied to the energy used or emissions generated within national borders. However, international trade can confuse the accounting. Moving a factory across the border does not change the total emissions, only the country to which they are attributed. Because of this, there is a growing consensus that the embodied emissions in international trade may undermine efforts to mitigate climate change. This has led to a number of studies that investigate the embodied emissions in international trade. Their findings have consistently demonstrated that industrialized countries tend to be net importers of embodied energy and emissions, while developing countries tend to be net exporters. It is often assumed that the industrialized countries have “offshored” energy intensive industries to developing countries, which in turn have specialized in energy intensive production. Some countries have started to adopt national targets around energy productivity, an indicator that links energy use to gross domestic product. Energy productivity has recently gained increased interest because it accommodates economic growth, is conceptually tied to energy efficiency – seen by policymakers as a low cost solution to limiting emissions – and focuses attention on how to maximize the welfare extracted from the energy system. We examine the issue of offshoring and specialization through the lens of embodied energy. First, we calculate the embodied energy in the net exports of 41 economies. We then decompose the embodied energy in net exports for each economy into three effects – intensity, specialization, and the trade balance – to reveal why each economy is a net exporter or importer of embodied energy.

6th March 2015
Real Gross Domestic Income for Saudi Arabia: A Measure of National Income

Real Gross Domestic Income for Saudi Arabia: A Measure of National Income

“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 its imports. The components of GDP are deflated using a base year to control for inflation (or deflation) over time. While this adjustment effectively controls for changing prices, it may not properly reflect the purchasing power availed or taken away by volatile oil prices for oil-dependent economies.”    

27th December 2020
What Drove Saudi Arabia’s 2020 Fall in CO2 Emissions?

What Drove Saudi Arabia’s 2020 Fall in CO2 Emissions?

In June 2021, the energy data provider Enerdata released its initial estimates for Saudi Arabia’s 2020 carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions. The data indicate that the Kingdom’s CO2 emissions from fuel combustion decreased by 3.3%, from 508.3 million tonnes of CO2 (MtCO2) in 2019 to 491.8 megatonnes of CO2 (MtCO2) in 2020.  

29th December 2021
Why Did Domestic Gasoline Prices Fall in Saudi Arabia?

Why Did Domestic Gasoline Prices Fall in Saudi Arabia?

What is behind the dramatic fall in gasoline prices? On May 11, 2020, Saudi Arabia slashed its domestic gasoline prices. The price of 91-octane gasoline fell from 1.31 to 0.67 Saudi Arabian riyals (SAR) per liter, while the price of 95-octane gasoline fell from 1.47 to 0.82 SAR per liter. As a result of these price reductions, domestic gasoline prices today are very close to those that prevailed before the gasoline price reform in 2018. As a result, some mistakenly believe that Saudi Arabia has introduced gasoline subsidies.

7th June 2020
Gasoline Price Reform in Saudi Arabia

Gasoline Price Reform in Saudi Arabia

Saudi Arabia has been adjusting gasoline prices on a quarterly basis since the start of 2019, with the most recent adjustment occurring on July 14, 2019. These adjustments depend on changes in international oil prices, and are smaller than the major changes in gasoline prices that occurred because of the energy price reforms of 2016 and 2018.

1st September 2019
What Happened to Oil Product Demand in Saudi Arabia During the First Two Quarters of 2020?

What Happened to Oil Product Demand in Saudi Arabia During the First Two Quarters of 2020?

In this commentary, we examine the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic and the various lockdown measures on domestic oil product demand in Saudi Arabia during the first and second quarters of 2020. We explore the pandemic’s effects on six key categories of secondary oil products, as defined by the Joint Organisations Data Initiative (JODI) (2020): liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) gasoline kerosene diesel fuel oil other oil products

31st January 2021
Industrial Energy Consumption in Saudi Arabia

Industrial Energy Consumption in Saudi Arabia

In 2017, Saudi Arabia’s total final energy consumption was 140.7 million tonnes of oil equivalent (Mtoe). Total final energy consumption is defined as energy used by final consumers (or end users). It includes electricity use in residential buildings, gasoline use in cars, and fuel use by industries producing cement, chemicals, and steel.   

31st May 2020

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