Has electricity turned green or black in Chile? A structural decomposition analysis of energy consumption

Rocío Román-Collado, Manuel Ordoñez, Luis Mundaca

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

Abstract

Since 2010, the Chilean government has backed a progressive increase of non-conventional renewable energies sources (NCRES) to put forward the country's energy independence from fossil fuels, and therefore from imports, and to reduce its CO2 emissions. The analysis of the final energy consumption
changes via a structural decomposition analysis, based on the Input-Output Tables for Chile in the period 2008e2013, enables us to identify the key effects as well as the sectors and energy sources in this process. The results show that the scale and the intensity effects are the main drivers of the final energy
consumption change. There is a significant increase of the final energy sources derived from natural gas (273%), electricity (23%) and oil (8%). The increase of the electricity consumption due to the scale, intensity and demand structure effects reveals a coupling with economic growth, lower energy efficiency
and larger end-use exporter sectors (e.g., mining). Concretely, the use of coal for electricity generation increased in absolute (23,648 Tcal) and relative terms of total fossil fuels (34%). Despite the rapid deployment of NCRES, a short-term analysis suggests that more aggressive policy efforts are needed to
effectively drive the transition towards a low-carbon energy system.
Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)282-298
JournalEnergy
Volume162
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2018 Aug 3

Subject classification (UKÄ)

  • Environmental Sciences
  • Energy Systems

Fingerprint

Dive into the research topics of 'Has electricity turned green or black in Chile? A structural decomposition analysis of energy consumption'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.

Cite this