Energy demand modelling and GHG emission reduction: case study Croatia

In the light of new European energy-climate package and its measures for increasing security of supply, decreasing the impact on environment and stimulating sustainable development with special emphasis on job creation and regional growth, Croatia as a future EU member state, needs to reconsider and develop new energy policy towards energy efficiency and renewable energy sources, in order to comply with all of the presented tasks. Planning future energy demand, considering various policy options like regulation, fiscal and financial measures, becomes one of the crucial issues of future national energy strategy. This paper analyses Croatian long term energy demand and its effect on the future national GHG emissions. For that purpose the national energy demand model was constructed (NeD model). The model is comprised out of six modules each representing one sector, following Croatian national energy balance; industry, transport, households, services, agriculture and construction. For three of the modules (industry, transport and households) previously developed long term energy demand models were used, while for the remaining three new models were constructed. As an additional feature, new GHG module was assembled and added to the NeD model covering all six sectors and calculating its emissions. The model is based on bottom up approach, where data was available, which combines and process large number of input data at the end use level. NeD model was used to present different future GHG mitigation paths, based on the implementation of various energy policies. Results obtained in this paper were also compared to Croatian National Energy Strategy for the years 2020 and 2030. It was shown that if already implemented policies are properly taken into account the actual final energy demand for 2030 will be 43% lower than forecast by the Croatian National Energy Strategy.