A Metabolic Profile of Peru: An Application of Multi-Scale Integrated Analysis of Societal and Ecosystem Metabolism (MuSIASEM) to the Mining Sector's Exosomatic Energy Flows

The present Peru's metabolic profile study poses the specific question, What are the long-term national energy system implications of the recent government-supported growth of the mining sector? The question is addressed by analyzing interactions between human economic activity (in hours) and electricity input flows (in joules) in the mining sector of the Peruvian economy in 2000 and 2010, with a projection for 2020. The methodology is based on the multi-scale integrated analysis of societal and ecosystem metabolism (MuSIASEM), which is an application of Georgescu-Roegen's bioeconomics approach. Empirical results found for the national economy show: (1) the massive increase in size of the energy system, which is explained by exploitation of the Camisea natural gas (NG) reserves, and (2) the potential for establishing a carbon lock-in in the electricity sector, owing to increasing construction of electricity plants based on NG as their primary energy source. Empirical results specific to the mining sector indicate: (1) the extremely high electricity metabolic rate of the mining sector (61.6 megajoules per hour in 2010), which was found to be 11 times the rate of electricity used per hour of human activity in the building and manufacturing sector in Peru, and (b) the potential increases in the proportion of electricity used in the mining sector (flow share), which could jeopardize the availability of high-quality primary energy supplies for the rest of society. In light of these implications, it is argued that the Peruvian government's strong support for growth of the mining sector may have to be reconsidered.