Comparing electricity consumption trends: a multilevel index decomposition analysis of the Genevan and Swiss economy

Article Article scientifique Article Comparing electricity consumption trends: a multilevel index decomposition analysis of the Genevan and Swiss economy eng 2019 author Van Megen Bram 777313 author Bürer Meinrad Christophe 842437 author Patel Martin 810106 Martin Kumar Patel 1-25 10.1016/j.eneco.2019.06.004 0140-9883 https://linkinghub.elsevier.com/retrieve/pii/S0140988319301884 Switzerland, including the canton of Geneva, aims to reduce its electricity consumption following its decision to phase out nuclear electricity production. To investigate whether national policies and a regional programme, both of which aim at improving electricity efficiency, may have had an effect, we disentangle the effects of changes in economic structure, overall economic activity and structure-corrected energy intensity (SCEI) on the electricity consumption in the canton of Geneva and in Switzerland on multiple aggregation levels. The primary sector being negligibly small, we define the economy as the secondary and tertiary sector. Our analysis shows that changes in electricity consumption in the Genevan and Swiss economy were mainly caused by changes in activity and SCEI, although structural changes were not negligible. Specifically, we have shown that correcting for structural change may significantly impact comparisons between regional SCEI trends. Our analysis shows that economy-wide electric energy efficiency improved both in Geneva and Switzerland. This is the case both for the time period 2000–2007 (first period, before implementation of the energy efficiency programme [EEP] éco21 in Geneva) and for the period 2008–2014 (second period, after implementation of the EEP, excluding 2015). In Switzerland, the average reductions in SCEI in the study periods were similar: 1.2% per year in the first period and 1.0% per year in the second period. The average reduction in SCEI in Geneva was faster in the second period (2.6% per year) than in the first period (1.5% per year). These findings suggest that national energy efficiency policies that have been in place since 2001 have been effective. A strong increase in SCEI by 4.6% occurred in Geneva in 2015, diminishing the gap between the Genevan and Swiss SCEI. We found that this increase was likely to be caused by weather effects. When including the year 2015, the average reduction in SCEI in the second period was 1.7% for Geneva and 1.1% for Switzerland. Moreover, we have shown that weather effects were more strongly correlated with SCEI than with absolute electricity consumption, highlighting the importance of correcting for structure and weather effects. Further, weather effects made it difficult to identify contributions from the EEP to the reduction of the Genevan SCEI. We found that the applicability IDA for tracing the effectiveness of EEPs needs to be critically assessed in view of data availability, confounding influences such as weather effects as well as the maturity and size of the EEP. Energy efficiency Electricity consumption Electricity intensity Index decomposition analysis Attribution analysis Cross-regional comparison Multilevel trend analysis Dewey 333.7-333.9 Dewey 550 Autre Parenariat SIG-UNIGE 18 Institut des sciences de l'environnement 0DB 41 Département F.-A. Forel des sciences de l'environnement et de l'eau 153 false 935 Energy efficiency Energy Economics 83 a903a8ba-be4a-4d8d-ad64-4dbb3900965e Article (Published version) Restricted 1-s2.0-S0140988319301884-main-1.pdf 3187077 application/pdf 3b6583db-082e-4fa8-8b56-27636281c9d8 Article (Accepted version) Public 1-s2.0-S0140988319301884-main.pdf 3161324 application/pdf Restricted 2020-07-01 openAccess Centres et instituts / Institut des sciences de l'environnement Faculté des sciences / Section des sciences de la Terre et de l'Environnement / Département F.-A. Forel des sciences de l'environnement et de l'eau

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Comparing electricity consumption trends: a multilevel index decomposition analysis of the Genevan and Swiss economy	Energy Economics			2019	453	294

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Van Megen, Bram