Structural transitions and energy use: a decomposition analysis of Portugal 1995–2010

ABSTRACT

The Portuguese energy sector changed substantially during the period 1995–2010, with the introduction of natural gas and a larger renewable energy production. During the same period, the country also continued the shift to a service economy. By 2005, these two transitions led to a large increase in primary energy use (PEU), followed by a significant decline until 2010. The goal of this paper is to identify the main driving factors of changes in the Portuguese PEU through structural decomposition analysis. To do so we build a novel hybrid model with a detailed description of the energy sector in physical units, and a coarser description of the rest of the economy in monetary units. The results show that the main drivers were final demand (increasing PEU) and the direct energy intensity (decreasing PEU); while the energy and economic transitions also contributed to decrease PEU, although to a lesser extent.

KEYWORDS:

• Structural decomposition analysis
• primary energy use
• Portugal
• energy transition
• energy input–output analysis

Acknowledgments

We recognize the support of the MIT Portugal Program. We also thank the valuable comments and suggestions of Professors Paul Behrens, Tânia Sousa and Tiago Domingos.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

ORCID

Zeus Guevara http://orcid.org/0000-0002-1254-8423

João F. D. Rodrigues http://orcid.org/0000-0002-1437-0059

Notes

1 In the following expressions, italic denotes a scalar (e.g. n_R and s^H), lowercase bold denotes a vector (e.g. c^E), and uppercase bold amatrix (e.g. L^E). Vectors are in column format and ′ denotes transposition.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia under Grant [SFRH/BD/51297/2010].