California Energy Balance Update and Decomposition Analysis for the Industry and Building Sectors

This report on the California Energy Balance (CALEB) database documents the latest update and improvements to CALEB and provides a complete picture of how energy is supplied and consumed in the State of California. The CALEB research team at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL) performed the research and analysis described in this report. CALEB manages highly disaggregated data on energy supply, transformation, and end-use consumption for about 30 different energy commodities, from 1990 to 2008. This report describes in detail California’s energy use from supply through end-use consumption as well as the data sources used. The report also analyzes trends in energy demand for the “Manufacturing” and “Building” sectors. Decomposition analysis of energy consumption combined with measures of the activity driving that consumption quantifies the effects of factors that shape energy consumption trends. The study finds that a decrease in energy intensity has had a very significant impact on reducing energy demand over the past 20 years. The largest impact can be observed in the “Manufacturing” sector where energy demand would have had increased by 358 trillion British thermal units (TBtu) if subsectoral energy intensities had remained at 1997 levels. Instead, energy intensity actually decreased by 70 TBtu. In the “Building” sector, combined results from the “Service” and “Residential” subsectors suggest that energy demand would have increased by 264 TBtu (121 TBtu in the “Services” sector and 143 TBtu in the “Residential” sector) during the same period, 1997 to 2008. However, energy demand increased by only 162 TBtu (92 TBtu in the “Services” sector and 70 TBtu in the “Residential” sector). These energy intensity reductions can be indicative of energy-efficiency improvements during the past 10 years. The research presented in this report provides a basis for developing an energy-efficiency performance index to measure progress over time in the State of California.

This report is available on the CIEE website.