Letting the (energy) Gini out of the bottle: Lorenz curves of cumulative electricity consumption and Gini coefficients as metrics of energy distribution and equity
Letting the (energy) Gini out of the bottle: Lorenz curves of cumulative electricity consumption and Gini coefficients as metrics of energy distribution and equity
复制标题
DOI：
10.1016/j.enpol.2004.02.017
复制
发表时间：
2005-09-01
期刊：
影响因子：
9
通讯作者：
Kammen, DM
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Jacobson, A;Milman, AD;Kammen, DM
能源服务是工业化国家和发展中国家生活质量和经济活力的根本决定因素。然而，很少有分析工具可以用来探索个人、家庭和国家能源消费和利用水平的变化。为了有助于这样的分析，我们扩展应用洛伦兹曲线的能源消耗。我们研究了挪威、美国、萨尔瓦多、泰国和肯尼亚五个国家的居民用电量分布。这些国家的能源分布范围很广，一些工业化国家的电力消费在人口中的分布比其他国家均匀得多，工业化经济体和工业化经济体之间的洛伦兹分布也有显著差异。该指标还为不同州和国家的能源管理的时间演变提供了重要见解。我们说明了这一点，在经济动荡的20世纪90年代在加州的商业和工业用电的初步纵向研究。最后，我们通过讨论能源转换效率和气候变化在塑造能源消费分布中的作用，探讨了洛伦兹分析在理解能源公平方面的局限性。洛伦兹方法被经济学家广泛用于分析收入分配，在能源分析中基本上没有使用，但它为估计能源消费的分布维度提供了一个强大的新工具。在减缓气候变化、电力行业放松管制和重组以及发展国家基础设施的背景下，广泛使用该技术可以为关于能源公平的科学和政策辩论作出重大贡献。(c)2004 Elsevier Ltd.保留所有权利。
Energy services are fundamental determinants of the quality of life as well as the economic vitality of both industrialized and developing nations. Few analytic tools exist, however, to explore changes in individual, household, and national levels of energy consumption and utilization. In order to contribute to such analyses, we extend the application of Lorenz curves to energy consumption. We examined the distribution of residential electricity consumption in five countries: Norway, USA, El Salvador, Thailand, and Kenya. These countries exhibit a dramatic range of energy profiles, with electricity consumption far more evenly distributed across the population in some industrialized nations than others, and with further significant differences in the Lorenz distribution between industrialized and industrializing economies. The metric also provides critical insights into the temporal evolution of energy management in different states and nations. We illustrate this with a preliminary longitudinal study of commercial and industrial electricity use in California during the economically volatile 1990s. Finally, we explore the limits of Lorenz analyses for understanding energy equity through a discussion of the roles that variations in energy conversion efficiency and climate play in shaping distributions of energy consumption. The Lorenz method, which is widely employed by economists to analyze income distribution, is largely unused in energy analysis, but provides a powerful new tool for estimating the distributional dimensions of energy consumption. Its widespread use can make significant contributions to scientific and policy debates about energy equity in the context of climate change mitigation, electric power industry deregulation and restructuring, and the development of national infrastructure. (c) 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.