MODELLING ENERGY CONSUMPTION AND CARBON DIOXIDE EMISSIONS OF FOSSIL FUELS AND NUCLEAR ENERGY USING LOTKA-VOLTERRA EQUATIONS

This study applied the Lotka-Volterra model to energy consumption and carbon dioxide (CO₂) emissions from 1965 to 2017 in the United States to explore the feasibility of replacing fossil fuels with nuclear energy. Parameter estimations suggested that the consumption of nuclear energy increases the consumption of fossil fuels, thereby increasing CO₂ emissions. Consistent with the arguments in Sovacool (2008) and Lenzen (2008), our results suggested that the mining, milling, conversion, enrichment, fuel fabrication, construction of nuclear plants, nuclear waste treatment, and decommissioning increase the consumption of fossil fuels and hence CO₂ emissions. Utilization of nuclear energy fails to reduce fossil fuel consumption and CO₂ emissions to achieve the environmental protection goals in the United States. By applying the Lyapunov functions to conduct equilibrium analysis, our investigation verified that the consumption of fossil fuels will ultimately be ten-fold the consumption of nuclear energy in the long term. Furthermore, the results of forecast accuracy show that the predictive ability of our proposed Lotka-Volterra model is superior to that of Bass model both in forecasting energy consumption and CO₂ emissions because the Lotka-Volterra model considers how nuclear energy affects the consumption and CO₂ emissions of fossil fuels, while the Bass model does not.