Energy Forecasting in Latin-American Countries

Abstract

The energy situation of the world is highly discussed today. Energy planning cannot be possible without a reasonable knowledge of past and present energy consumption. Demand forecasts would be made either on the basis of statistical evaluations and projections of past consumptions trend, or on the basis of specific technical studies. In general, the relatively sophisticated econometric and input-output approaches are easier to apply in developed countries, while data and manpower constraints indicate that simpler techniques will be more effective in developing countries.

The principal purpose of this article is to analyse the simple relations among main economic, social and energy variables of Latin-American countries, to forecast in the next 30 years the primary energy consumption and production, energy exports and imports, as well as the final energy consumption for each of these countries.

The long-term forecastings of primary energy are based on the explanatory variables gross domestic product (GDP) and population, representing the respective economic and social variables. The utilized methodology is to correlate these variables by country and year, by using of the statistical method of less squares. The high significance of respective determination coefficients of the found relations confirm the intimate interdependence that exists between energy, economic and social indicators.