Strategic energy flows in input-output relations: a temporal multilayer approach

TL;DR

This paper introduces a temporal multilayer network approach to analyze embodied energy flows across countries and sectors over time, assessing system resilience and identifying critical components using novel topological indicators.

Contribution

It develops a methodological framework combining multilayer network analysis, Multi-Dimensional HITS, and maximum flow indicators to evaluate energy system resilience and critical sectors.

Findings

Effective differentiation between renewable and non-renewable energy patterns.

Identification of key sectors and connections affecting system stability.

Insights into temporal evolution of energy dependencies from 1990 to 2016.

Abstract

The energy consumption, the transfer of resources through the international trade, the transition towards renewable energies and the environmental sustainability appear as key drivers in order to evaluate the resilience of the energy systems. Concerning the consumptions, in the literature a great attention has been paid to direct energy, but the production of goods and services also involves indirect energy. Hence, in this work we consider different types of embodied energy sources and the time evolution of the sectors' and countries' interactions. Flows are indeed used to construct a directed and weighted temporal multilayer network based respectively on renewable and non-renewable sources, where sectors are nodes and layers are countries. We provide a methodological approach for analysing the network reliability and resilience and for identifying critical sectors and economies in the system by applying the Multi-Dimensional HITS algorithm. Then, we evaluate central arcs in the network at each time period by proposing a novel topological indicator based on the maximum flow problem. In this way, we provide a full view of economies, sectors and connections that play a relevant role over time in the network and whose removal could heavily affect the stability of the system. We provide a numerical analysis based on the embodied energy flows among countries and sectors in the period from 1990 to 2016. Results prove that the methods are effective in catching the different patterns between renewable and non-renewable energy sources.