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Industry and Product Aggregation

Matthew Kuperus Heun

industry_and_product_aggregation.Rmd

Introduction

Some CL-PFU database products contain aggregated products (energy carriers) and industries (sectors) on rows and columns of the RUVY matrices that describe energy conversion chains (ECCs). This vignette discusses the meaning of the some columns in matsindf data frames such as agg_eta_pfu.

Product aggregations

The Product.aggregation column tells how products (i.e., energy carriers) are aggregated in the RUVY matrices. There are three possible values.

  • Specified: No aggregation is applied before summing to primary, final, and useful stages.
    Energy carriers are listed as, for example, “Anthracite [from Coal mines]”. Specification gives the source of the Anthracite, in this case “Coal mines”.
  • Despecified: Some aggregation has been applied before summing to primary, final, and useful stages.
    Energy carriers are listed as, simply, Anthracite.
    There is no specific information about the source of the Anthracite.
  • Grouped: Energy carriers are aggregated to groups.
    For example, Anthracite, Brown coal, and all other coals are aggregated to “Coal & coal products”.

In many data frames, rows for all of “Specified”, “Despecified”, and “Grouped” are present. Although there should be no difference between “Specified”, “Despecified”, and “Grouped” when summing to primary, final, and useful stages, I usually choose “Specified”. If energy carriers are mis-identified for aggregation, “Despecified” and “Grouped” will contain less than all of the energy or exergy at a primary, final, or useful stage.

Industry aggregations

There are, again, three options for values in the Industry.aggregation column:

  • Specified: No aggregation has been applied to before summing to primary, final, and useful stages.
    Some sectors are listed as, for example, “Imports [of Brown coal]”.
  • Despecified: Some aggregation has been applied before summing to primary, final, and useful stages.
    Some sectors are listed simply as “Imports” without specifying the energy carrier that is imported.
  • Grouped: Some sectors are aggregated to groups before summing to primary, final, and useful stages. For example, “World aviation bunkers”, “Domestic aviation”, “Road”, “Rail”, “Pipeline transport”, “World marine bunkers”, “Domestic navigation”, “Transport not elsewhere specified”, “International aviation”, and “International navigation” are aggregated to “Transport”.

Again, I usually choose the “Specified” option, although when summing to primary, final, and useful stages, there should be no difference between Specified, Despecified, and Grouped.

Conclusion

This vignette described the meaning of the some columns (“Product.aggregation” and “Industry.aggregation”) in matsindf data frames such as agg_eta_pfu.