Exploring the energy demand of the service sector and its role in global emissions

Abstract

The service sector has grown rapidly in the last decades, resulting in a significant increase of its energy consumption and subsequently greenhouse gas emissions. Therefore, it has become utterly important to understand what drives the sector's energy demand. For this purpose, this study takes a look at the regional development of each of the energy end-uses of the service sector: appliances, cooking, lighting, space cooling, space heating and water heating. In order to understand the energy demand trend of the service sector and its projection into the future, a global service sector model has been developed, within the IMAGE/TIMER model environment by linking the energy use of each of the end-uses to the sector’s value added (SVA).