Commercial (IEA) / Services (ISIC) sectors sub-categories

[FlorianLeblancDr]

Hi,

During our last meeting, some of us stressed out the importance of harmonizing the macroeconomic sectors categories (ongoing #279) and final energy sub-sectors categories (tag here)

The main request by @volker-krey and @macflo8 was to carry on the work done in the macro group by defining clearly the ISIC sectors concerns in the final energy sectors files.

I also raised the issue of Services sectors, which does not have the same definition / naming in energy statistics and in economic statics.
Good point by Volker that we should stick to each nomenclature (IEA, ISIC, etc).
Following this idea I am making suggestions to improve clarity beyond ISIC definitions, sorted by numbers below.

I wish to gather ideas and feedback to prepare a pull request for the first release end of the month.
@IAMconsortium/common-definitions-macro-economy

Basics:

In energy statistics (IEA), transportation are separated, other services are called "Commercial and public" (the word commercial being a bit misleading), with another category "not elsewhere specified" which include Military fuel use.

"Commercial and public" includes roughly accommodation, food services, ICTs, financial, insurance activities, water treatment and supply, education, health, and some others (I to U ISIC sectors).

First step

Defining ISIC sectors in the final energy tag sector list: I can do this soon.

Second step

Most of the energy consumed in the services sectors is for heating, cooling and appliances.
There is of course exception for some equipment (e.g., in the health sector), and two exceptions in ICTs activities and in water treatment, and all other activities using ICTs (research, finance, etc.).

I think this distinction has never been clear in our modelling, and am afraid most of us project mainly space heating and cooling with high energy efficiency potentials, e.g. in LED scenarios.

Suggestion: having two sub-categories for space heating and non-space heating in the energy nomenclature
Commercial|Heating and Cooling
Commercial|non Heating and Cooling

Third step

Providing sub-sectors categories for energy and macroeconomic variables that matches.

I paste my suggestion, and below provide statistics I looked into.

Energy sub-sectors:
Transportation
Commercial|Trade
Commercial|Information and Communication
Commercial|Financial and insurance
Commercial|Education and Human Health
Commercial|Water
Commercial|Other

Economic sub-sectors:
Services|Transportation
Services|Trade
Services|Information and Communication
Services|Financial and insurance
Services|Education and Human Health
Services|Water
Services|Other

This would allow cool reporting for model which can do so, and computation of indicators such as the energy intensity of added value, etc.

Transport excluded, I used the GTAP database to compute the share of energy consumed among all services sectors, as well as the share of added value, for the world and the USA:

				Energy shares (%)			Vale Added Share (%)
				World	USA		World	USA
Commercial|	Trade			19.4577523978455	18.0848231098175		17.2279842952568	14.056617649894
Commercial|	Information and Communication			4.52064827748767	1.76177700850914		6.82021328808999	4.94108799472877
Commercial|	Financial and insurance			3.31504929366453	4.34084260100608		9.2329882365945	13.2636297927475
Commercial|	Education and Human Health			21.1914485910215	31.0688203292957		17.7358293457692	23.1370609426415
Commercial|	Water			8.60232733230963	6.2263771168383		1.70478680646279	1.58569549095501
Commercial|	Other			42.9127741076712	38.5173598345332		47.2781980278268	43.0159081290333

Other sub-categories are possibles. My main idea was:

• Wholesale and repair trade should be separated
• ICTs will increase in the future (data centers, AI, etc.)
• The financial sector has really high added value in some countries, includes crypto-mining elsewhere
• the water sector is important for developing countries.