When being renewable may not be enough: Typologies of trends in energy and carbon footprint towards sustainable development

Abstract

Renewable energy has been encouraged to address climate change and promote sustainable development, leading to structural changes in the national energy matrices. Brazil is reaching a 50/50 renewable/non-renewable energy mix. However, the wide variability in emissions intensity among renewable sources raises questions about the effectiveness of structural changes for SDGs. The present study aims to identify typological profiles (TPs) of structural changes in sectoral energy and carbon footprint and their contributions to sustainable development. From an ecological input-output model, we calculated the sectoral energy and carbon footprint for 2000, 2005, 2010, and 2015. The method adds novelty by creating typologies of structural changes confronting renewable vs. non-renewable and mainly renewable vs. renewable. Four TPs of structural change were found. TP-I and TP-II tended to increase the relative share of renewables in their energy footprint, opposing TP-III and TP-IV. A controversy emerged contrasting TP-I and TP-II since both increased renewable consumption. TP-I decreased the renewable emissions while TP-II increased them. The explanation lies in the energy sources’ emissions intensity. While TP-I sectors tended to increase the consumption of renewable energies with low intensity of emissions, such as electricity, TP-II sectors increased the consumption of renewables whose gross emissions intensity could be even higher than non-renewables. Therefore, the simple substitution of non-renewable for renewable sources may not be enough. Pursuing the long-term sustainable structural changes need to be planned based on renewable sources with the lowest net emission intensity and highest renewability.