Sustainability Multivariate Analysis of the Energy Consumption of Ecuador Using MuSIASEM and BIPLOT Approach

• Main Authors: Nathalia Tejedor-Flores, Purificación Vicente-Galindo, Purificación Galindo-Villardón
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: MDPI AG 2017-06-01
• Series: Sustainability
• Subjects: sustainable development; energy consumption; MuSIASEM; HJ-Biplot
• Online Access: http://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/9/6/984

Rapid economic growth, expanding populations and increasing prosperity are driving up demand for energy, water and food, especially in developing countries. To understand the energy consumption of a country, we used the Multi-Scale Integrated Analysis of Societal and Ecosystem Metabolism (MuSIASEM) approach. The MuSIASEM is an innovative approach to accounting that integrates quantitative information generated by distinct types of conventional models based on different dimensions and scales of analysis. The main objective of this work is to enrich the MuSIASEM approach with information from multivariate methods in order to improve the efficiency of existing models of sustainability. The Biplot method permits the joint plotting, in a reduced dimension of the rows (individuals) and columns (variables) of a multivariate data matrix. We found, in the case study of Ecuador, that the highest values of the Exosomatic Metabolic Rate (EMR) per economic sector and Economic Labor Productivity (ELP) are located in the Productive Sector (PS). We conclude that the combination of the MuSIASEM variables with the HJ-Biplot allows us to easily know the detailed behavior of the labor productivity and energy consumption of a country.