Lost carbon emissions: the role of non-manufacturing "other industries" and refining in industrial energy use and carbon emissions in IEA countries

We present a review of trends in energy use and output in branches of indus try not often studied in detail: petroleum refining and what we call the Et her industries - agriculture, mining, and construction. From a sample of IE A countries we analyze eight with the most complete data from the early 197 0s to the mid-1990s. We carry out a decomposition analysis of changes in en ergy use and carbon emissions in the "other industries" sector. We also rev iew briefly the impact of including refining in the evolution of manufactur ing energy use, usually studied without refining. Despite many data problem s, we present our results as a way of enticing others to study these import ant "lost" sectors more carefully. We have five basic findings. First, "oth er industries" tends to be a minor consumer of energy in many countries, bu t in some, particularly Denmark, the US? and Australia, mining or agricultu re can be a major sector too large to be overlooked. Second, refining is an extremely energy intensive industry which despite a relatively low share o f value added consumes as much as 20% of final energy use in manufacturing. Third, as a result of a slower decline in the carbon-intensity of these in dustries vis-a-vis the manufacturing industries, their share of industrial emissions has been rising. Fourth, for other industries variation in per ca pita output plays a relatively small role in differentiating per capita car bon emissions compared to the impact of subsectoral energy intensities. Fin ally, including this energy in CO2 calculations has little impact on overal l trends, but does change the magnitude of emissions in most countries sign ificantly. Clearly, these industries provide important opportunities for se arching for carbon emissions reductions. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.