DISENTANGLE ENERGY EFFICIENCY CHANGE DRIVERS

Given the high level of energy consumption and its impact on environment over the last decades, policy decision-makers are increasingly recognizing the need to take actions that allow to address unsustainable energy consumption patterns. One field of action has been the promotion of measures that contribute to improve energy efficiency of countries. The purpose of this study is to identify the factors that drive changes in energy efficiency applying the multiplicative Log Mean Divisia Index (LMDI) decomposition method for a set of countries. The results show that overall energy efficiency trends displays different patterns between countries and the same happens within each country from a sectorial perspective. Major drivers of improvements of overall energy efficiency were the intensity effect and the affluence effect, whereas the driver that hampered those improvements was the energy consumption per capita. Policy decision-makers should support measures that promote the adoption of energy-saving technologies resulting from new technological developments.