Taíse Fátima Mattei

Electricity is an indispensable input for most human activities and necessary for economic growth. Energy consumption and generation improve people's quality of life, but they can also degrade the environment. Aiming to contribute to the development of the sector and to Brazilian literature, the general objective of this work is to analyze the consumption of electric energy in the cities of Paraná in the period from 2002 to 2016 in a spatial approach. The research is justified given that the state of Paraná is the fourth largest in the generation and consumption of electric energy among the Brazilian states. For this purpose, the main methodology used is the spatial data panel. The results revealed that the consumption of electricity is influenced by the geographic space in the state of Paraná. There was a concentration of municipalities with high energy consumption per capita on all edges of the state, mainly close to the Metropolitan Region of Curitiba, North and West of Paraná. The entire central region of the state was composed of municipalities with low energy consumption. The first specific objective identified the main determinants of electricity consumption in the municipalities of Paraná from 2002 to 2016, which are: energy consuming units per km², GDP per capita, demographic density, number of formal jobs per capita, active establishments per km², industry share in GDP and trade opening. The results also showed that the electricity consumption per capita of a municipality positively affected the energy consumption of neighboring municipalities and there was a spatial overflow in the number of jobs, in the demographic density and in the participation of the industry in the GDP. The consumption of electricity was also used to test and apply, in the other two specific objectives, the hypotheses of the Kuznets curve and convergence for the municipalities of Paraná from 2002 to 2016. The peak consumption of electricity per capita will not occur in a near future in the state of Paraná, since the GDP per capita at the maximum point necessary to change the slope of the consumption curve was quite far from the reality of most municipalities. Although convergence in electricity consumption has been discovered, the relatively low speed of convergence has suggested that it may not yet be efficient to develop electricity control policies, as municipalities still need to increase consumption to ensure economic growth. However, in any case, there must be differentiation in the conduct of sustainable policies in the different municipalities, since the discrepancy in economic terms and social development in the state was notable. Policy makers in the state of Paraná need to have a clear understanding of the delicate situation and plan the formulation of plans for future control of energy consumption and reduction of environmental degradation. However, nothing prevents other policies, other than just energy control, from being applied in the state to ensure economic and environmental sustainability.