Maria Pablo-Romero, Rafael Pozo-Barajas, Javier Sanchez-Rivas (p)

Tuyara Gavrilyeva

The EU is committed to reduce a 40% their domestic greenhouse gas emissions by 2030. In order to reach this ambitious target, new measures affecting all economic sectors would be needed. This paper focuses on the tourism sector. By using econometric panel data techniques, the relationships between tourist overnight stays and the hospitality sector electricity consumption is studied for the Spanish provinces along the period 1999-2013. With this aim an Energy-tourism Kuznets Curve hypothesis is tested. The results show that the Energy-tourism Kuznets Curve hypothesis is not supported. An increasing positive relationship between the hospitality sector electricity consumption and overnight stays is observed. Results also show that the hospitality sector electricity consumption elasticities with respect to tourist overnights differ among the provinces, being the values within a range of 0.1-0.5 along the period. The highest values are observed for Balearic Islands, the Canaries Islands provinces, Gerona, Tarragona and Malaga. Energy efficiency measures, the adoption of renewable energy systems and the development of capabilities for energy management are recommended.

Tuyara Gavrilyeva (p), Yekaterina Kontar

Javier Sánchez-Rivas García

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