Close to $400 million is required to cut electricity wastage to less than 10%, in which case the country will have the same ranking as Portugal and Spain.

Power wastage in the national electricity grid declined from 15.2% to 11.1% between 2013 and 2018. Nonetheless, Iran is still among countries in which massive amounts of power is wasted.

If the wastage was not cut [at least by 4%], the government would be forced to build new power stations to produce at least 2,500 megawatts costing $1.7 billion. To generate 2,500 MW close to 8 billion cubic meters of natural gas is needed.

"Iran ranks seventh in terms of power wastage in the world," ISNA said.

Iraq (50.6%), India (19.4), Pakistan (17.4%), Brazil (15.8), Turkey (14.8), Mexico (13.7%) are the top six.