THE USE OF GROWTH-CURVES IN ENERGY STUDIES

This paper consists of three inter-related parts. The first is a survey study on the application of growth curves to energy studies. A description on each of the four identified application areas, namely, energy resource analysis, energy demand modeling, fuel substitution, and energy technology development, is presented. The second part deals with the functional forms and mathematical properties of several commonly used growth-curve models. The extension to the basic functional forms to incorporate explicative variables and its relevance to energy studies are discussed. The last part is a case study on the modeling of the diffusion of energy-consuming durables using several growth-curve models. The forecasting performance of these models is compared and discussed.