Assessing the technological responsibility of productive structures in electricity consumption

A methodology is developed which allows us to measure the responsibility of the productive structure of an economic system with respect to the consumption and generation of electricity within an input–output framework. We propose a technical indicator of technology responsibility in electricity consumption based on the assessment of technical coefficients. Technological responsibility refers to the capacity of a sector or economic transaction between sectors to induce electricity consumption regardless of the final demand vector. Sectors with a high technological responsibility are those whose technologies use inputs which either directly or indirectly require much electricity independently of the composition of the final demand in the economy. This methodology is applied to the productive sectors of the Spanish economy. It is found out that a few transactions between sectors are highly technologically responsible regarding electricity consumption. The results show that, although the service sectors are the ones with the greatest share in electricity consumption, the industrial sectors (particularly, the extractive, heavy and energy industries), the electricity generation sector and construction are the ones with the greatest technological responsibility, i.e., they have technology mixes with a large propensity to consume electricity, propagating to the other sectors. The sectors with the highest technological responsibility are clustered around three broad sectors: energy, metal manufacturing and transport.