Archive:European energy statistics system

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This article presents a short account of the actions Eurostat has undertaken over the last five years to ensure that the Energy statistics system will remain a modern system, fully responsive to the Commission policy requirements.

The principles for a common European Union (EU) energy policy were elaborated in the European Commission Green paper "A European Strategy for Sustainable, Competitive and Secure Energy" in 2006. A series of legislative measures were subsequently adopted by the European Council and the European Parliament to promote this Strategy, these measures comprising often mandatory quantitative targets.

The Energy statistics system was strengthened during this process. While it served the Commission policy services in defining quantitative targets and providing the starting values, it has continued to evolve thus ensuring that Commission policies will also be supported by official statistics in the future.

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The common energy policy of the European Union

The objectives pursued by the Commission in the field of energy over the last two decades aimed at ensuring the uninterrupted physical availability of energy commodities at a price that was affordable for all consumers and in a sustainable manner. However, it was the adoption of the Lisbon Treaty in 2009 that defined these goals (security of supply, competitiveness, sustainability) as the Common Energy Policy.

It all started in 2005 when the Hampton Court European Council called for a common EU energy policy. A year later, the Commission presented the green paper on "a European Strategy for Sustainable, Competitive and Secure Energy" putting forward concrete proposals in six priority areas:

Completing the internal gas and electricity markets;
Enhancing security of supply, rethinking the oil and gas supply system and stocks;
Diversifying the energy supply, asking for a regular Strategic EU Energy Review;
Improving global warming by an increased use of renewable energy sources and improved energy efficiency;
Developing a strategic energy technology plan, and
Defining a common external energy policy.

In 2007, the Spring European Council adopted ambitious energy and climate change objectives for 2020 – to increase the share of renewable energy to 20 %, to make a 20 % improvement in energy efficiency and to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 20 %. These energy and climate change objectives were later incorporated in the Europe 2020 Strategy for a smart, sustainable and inclusive growth. In parallel to these important political recommendations/decisions, the Commission has proposed three packages/waves of legislative measures. The following legislative measures that were recently adopted by the Council and Parliament had a significant impact on the Energy statistics system as they created reporting requirements defining often mandatory/voluntary quantitative targets:

The Directive on the promotion of energy from renewable sources (2009/28/EC)
The Directive on minimum stocks of oil and petroleum products (2009/119/EC)
The Regulation on the security of gas supply (994/2010)
The Directive on energy efficiency (under discussion in Council/EP)

A comprehensive legal framework for the Energy statistics system

The current Energy Statistics System is based essentially^[1] on the Energy Statistics Regulation (1099/2008), a Regulation that was part of the first package (the energy and climate change package, 2008) of the Commission legislative proposals.

The Price Transparency Directive (2008/92/EC), the Combined Heat and Power Directive (2004/8/EC), a voluntary collection of electricity and gas prices in households and a voluntary short questionnaire allowing the assessment of effectiveness of competition in the gas and electricity markets, form the other components of the Energy statistics system.

It is worth noting that the Energy statistics system is based largely on a legally binding obligation, ensuring necessary resources and higher quality information. It responds to a broad spectrum of energy policies pursued by the Commission and the MS and is used extensively in:

The definition and evaluation of energy policies and targets
Reports and studies on energy markets, including modelling/forecasting work and the impact assessments of Commission legal proposals

The collected energy statistics are available in the Eurostat dissemination database (Energy)

The Energy statistics system in response to energy policy requirements

The Energy statistics system is a dynamic system. It has been evolving over the last five years as a result of the needs arising from the legislative packages introduced by the Commission ensuring that it will adequately serve the monitoring/reporting requirements of these new obligations. Indeed, Eurostat interacted continuously with the Commission policy services in order to ensure that the monitoring of quantitative targets - comprised in legally binding legislation - is based on the statistics collected and disseminated by the Energy statistics system (official statistics). This interaction comprised a wide range of actions. Not only did Eurostat serve the Commission policy services with statistics (starting values) and methodological support in defining the monitoring system but actions were also initiated that aimed at improving the quality (coverage, accuracy, timeliness) of collected statistics. In addition, the Energy Statistics methodology and energy accounting system was also reviewed and extended to cope with new technologies and accrued requirements arising from these Commission legislative initiatives.

A set of these actions, addressing essentially the EU 2020 Strategy and the Security of Supplies policy, are presented below.

Renewable energy sources

Renewable energy sources (RES) play an important role in securing diversified, mainly indigenous, energy supplies and in combating climate change. The European Council and Parliament adopted in 2009 the Directive 2009/28/EC promoting the use of energy from renewable energy sources by setting mandatory national targets for the overall share of energy from renewable sources and for the contribution of renewable sources in transport in the year 2020. Based on the 2005 starting points and existing potential in each of the Member States, the national targets were defined, ensuring a 20 % RES contribution by 2020 at EU level. For transport, a flat 10 % target was defined for each Member State for the year 2020.

It should be noted that Eurostat initiated, developed and established the EU renewable energy statistics in the early nineties. This system was later adopted by the International Energy Agency (IEA) and promoted internationally. On the basis of this RES statistical system and expertise, Eurostat contributed substantially to this Directive:

Defining the indicator(s) for monitoring progress to the 2020 targets
Providing starting values (year 2005) that were used to determine the mandatory 2020 national targets

Following the adoption of this Directive, Eurostat implemented a series of actions to improve the quality of weak components of RES statistics as well as to align the Energy statistics system to the provisions of the Directive. In that respect, Eurostat:

Financed surveys on "energy consumption in households" improving the quality of biomass use (accuracy), use of solar systems (accuracy) and heat pumps (coverage) – in progress;
Developed the methodology for accounting ambient heat (heat pumps) – a Commission Decision will be adopted later this year;
Developed a system for accounting of the hydro component of mixed pump-storage hydro-plants;
Developed an IT tool (SHARES) allowing MS to calculate automatically the RES shares (see below) once the Joint Annual Questionnaires^[2] are available, keeping MS reporting burden low and ensuring comparable reporting under both the RES Directive and the Energy Statistics Regulation.

Table 1 presents the renewable energy sources contribution in electricity generation, for heating and cooling purposes and in the transport sector over the period 2004-2010 at EU level. The EU Share of the renewable energy sources in gross final consumption of energy^[3] is also presented over the same period as are the 2020 mandatory targets at EU level allowing progress to be assessed. Eurostat has recently published a progress evaluation at national level.

Table 1: EU Share of Renewable Energy Sources mandatory targets (%)
Source: Eurostat

Energy efficiency/Energy savings

Energy efficiency/energy savings is the most cost-effective way to reduce carbon dioxide (CO₂) emissions, improve energy security and competitiveness, thus making energy consumption more affordable for consumers. The European Council and Parliament are currently^[4] negotiating a Commission proposal for a Directive on energy efficiency. This proposal addresses the energy system - supply (production, transformation), transmission/ distribution and end use sectors – in a holistic manner, attempting to tap in on the potential for existing energy savings across a wide range of activities.

The Directive will set the 2020 EU target on Primary Energy Consumption (PEC) and Final Energy Consumption (FEC)^[5] at 1474 Mtoe (million tonnes of oil equivalent) and 1078 Mtoe, correspondingly. It invites Member States to adopt indicative national energy efficiency targets, notifying the corresponding national PEC and FEC indicative targets to the Commission. It must be noted that the 2020 EU target values quantify the political statement made by the 2007 Spring European Council of making 20 % improvement in energy efficiency. Obviously, the national indicative targets must also be compatible with this target, an evaluation to be carried out by the Commission in 2014.

The Directive also foresees a range of indicators for reporting progress in specific sectors/ activities of the energy system (electricity generation, heat production, industry, transport, households and services) on an annual basis.

Eurostat worked with the competent policy service to define the appropriate overall indicator(s) and target(s) ensuring that statistics collected under the Energy Statistics Regulation will suffice. Table 2 presents an evaluation of progress towards the energy efficiency target(s) at EU level over the period 2005-2010, on the basis of statistics available under the Energy Statistics Regulation.

Table 2: Evolution of energy efficiency indicators (in Mtoe)
Source: Eurostat

Broadly speaking, the data requirements (both energy and activity data) arising from the draft proposal are largely satisfied with the existing official statistics both at EU and national level. The proposed Directive also integrates the Combined Heat and Power (CHP) Directive (2004/8/EC) in its provisions, including the reporting system which was developed by Eurostat in the late nineties and these statistics are disseminated regularly.

The monitoring of energy efficiency policies requires detailed information on energy consumption patterns / equipment characteristics at a highly disaggregated level of economic activities. Traditionally, the Energy statistics system (a low cost / burden system) has been based on surveys of the supply side (energy industry, wholesale traders, importers and exporters) complemented by surveys of the manufacturing industry. The Energy Statistics Regulation recognises this weakness and demands Eurostat and the Member States to develop further the Energy statistics system, providing detailed end-use statistics at a disaggregated level. It is in this context that Eurostat implemented over the last few years a series of actions addressing the Households sector, including:

The financing of surveys to improve coverage / accuracy of statistics for energy consumption by end-use, equipment availability, penetration of high efficiency technologies, energy consumption patterns.
The development of a methodology manual on energy consumption in households – in progress.

Eurostat is currently negotiating with the Member States alternative options for extending the Energy Statistics Regulation with detailed statistics for the Households sector.

Early estimates of CO₂ (carbon dioxide) emissions from energy use

The European Union, as a party to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), has to report annually on greenhouse gas emission inventories at the latest 16 months after the reference year (Council Decision 280/2004/EC concerning a mechanism for monitoring Community greenhouse gas emissions^[6]). The EU inventory is compiled by the European Environment Agency (EEA) based on national submissions of greenhouse gas emission inventories. Traditionally, Eurostat assists (Council Decision 2005/166) the EEA, providing them with annual energy statistics in order to perform Quality Assessment/Quality Control checks of national submissions of energy data according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reference approach as well as for inventory gap-filling purposes.

In order to improve the timeliness of the EU carbon dioxide emissions data, Eurostat initiated an action two years ago called Early Estimates of CO₂ Emissions, which aims to provide first estimates on CO₂ emissions from energy use only four months after the reference year (instead of the current 16 months) using a harmonised methodology and based on monthly energy statistics already available through the Energy Statistics Regulation. Various approaches were considered, including:

An estimation of the absolute level of emission inventories using cumulative monthly energy statistics and the IPCC reference approach, based on the extended list of fossil fuels comprised in the Energy Statistics Regulation;

An estimation of the fossil fuel consumption trend using cumulative monthly energy statistics in two consecutive years (Y, Y+1), allowing the calculation of emissions from energy use in year (Y+1) based on this fossil fuel consumption trend and the official emission inventory (submitted under the UNFCCC) of the preceding year (Y).

These approaches were evaluated "predicting" already known (benchmark) emission inventories for the years 2009 and 2010. The analysis has revealed that the trend method (second approach) resulted in higher quality estimates. The calculation method also considered an aggregation of fossil fuel at a higher commodity level (coal and equivalents, lignite and equivalents, liquid fuels, gaseous fuels). Obviously, the superiority of the trend method is because it eliminates errors arising from a systematic underestimation of monthly consumption levels due to an incomplete coverage of reporting units on a monthly basis. In addition, aggregating energy commodities at a higher level simplifies the approach while at the same time allows an increased comparability between cumulative monthly and annual energy statistics eliminating discrepancies from misclassification of products, in particular, those of marginal importance.

Table 3 summarises the results for the evaluation carried out for the years 2009 and 2010. It also presents the first Early Estimate of the EU CO₂ emissions from energy use for the year 2011. In general, there is a good agreement (within 1 %) between the actual (UNFCCC) emission inventory declarations and the Eurostat early estimate for both years at EU level. It should be noted that a good agreement (within 2 %) was also observed for the national declarations of several Member States, their cumulative inventory corresponding to more than 75 % of the overall EU inventory.

Table 3: CO₂ (carbon dioxide) emission inventories (1000 tons)
Source: Eurostat

However, higher discrepancies exist between the actual (UNFCCC) and estimated emission inventories for several Member States due to significant differences between cumulative monthly and annual consumption estimates for certain energy commodities. Eurostat is examining these discrepancies in collaboration with the competent Member States in order to improve the quality of monthly statistics. Once these actions are implemented, the early estimates of CO₂ emissions will be released on a regular basis four months after the reference year.

Comparing the early estimate for the year 2011 with UNFCCC data for 2010 suggests that CO₂ emissions for EU-27 and for EU-15 decreased by 2.3 and 4.2 % respectively, while for EU-12 they increased by 5.8 %

Security of oil and gas supply

EU has been affected repeatedly over the last forty years by oil crisis as she depends strongly on imports of crude oil from geopolitically uncertain regions. Disruptions of natural gas supply were also witnessed over the last decade, associated with gas shortages from Russia.

Table 4 presents the EU dependency^[7] on imported crude oil and natural gas; Table 5 and Table 6 present the relative importance of the supplier countries for oil and natural gas, respectively. While gas and oil EU dependency is on the rise, the relative importance of Russian natural gas imports is gradually decreasing.

Table 4: EU oil and natural gas dependency (in %)
Source: Eurostat

Table 5: EU Oil imports, by country of origin (in %)
Source: Eurostat

Table 6: EU Gas imports, by country of origin (in %)
Source: Eurostat

It is this strong EU dependence on imported oil and natural gas and the past oil crisis and gas disruptions that have lead the Commission to review/strengthen the legal provisions related to the security of supply of hydrocarbons. Indeed:

In 2009, the Directive 2009/119 was adopted by the European Council and Parliament, imposing on Member States the obligation to maintain a minimum level of crude oil and petroleum product stocks. This Directive improves the stocks availability and aligns the stockholding obligation and the calculation methodology with those of the IEA.

A reporting system was developed for the EU that responds to the requirements of the Directive (emergency, commercial, specific stocks), streamlining it with the Energy Statistics Regulation and the existing IEA reporting system in order to keep MS reporting burden low, and ensuring also a direct comparability of stockholding obligations/reported stock values under the two systems (IEA and the EU Directive). This oil stocks reporting system was adopted unanimously by the Member States in the Eurostat Energy Statistics Working Party in 2011

In 2010, the Regulation 994/2010 was adopted, establishing the necessary provisions to safeguard security of gas supply with the objectives of guaranteeing the continuous functioning of the internal gas market, and defining a common legal and technical framework for tackling the effects of supply disruptions. As a result of a detailed examination of the information needs under this Regulation, it was established that the Energy Statistics Regulation would continue providing the statistical support for energy policy and market functioning while the new Regulation would create a special information exchange system to function in case of disruptions/ emergency situations, in addition to other non-statistical reporting requirements established by this Regulation.

This summary overview presents actions that Eurostat has implemented^[8] (or which are still in progress) to respond to numerous Commission energy policy initiatives over the past few years. Certainly, several of these actions are an extension of activities that Eurostat initiated a number of years ago, as the EU energy policy principles have remained stable for more than two decades. It should be stressed that it was the active involvement of Member States in implementing projects and making available their expertise and knowledge in Task Forces and Working Groups that has allowed the Energy statistics system to follow closely the new policy requirements.

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Notes

↑ In addition to these statistics which are collected and disseminated by Eurostat, the Commission also collects information on the main characteristics of projects under construction/planned (Regulation 617/2010), weekly consumer prices of oil products (Decision 1999/280/EC) as well as monthly oil stocks to confirm that minimum stockholding obligations (Directive 2006/67EC) are respected. The Energy Market Observatory also acquires data provided by commercial companies.
↑ Joint Annual Questionnaires are the electronic questionnaires – common with the IEA – used to report annual statistics under the Energy Statistics Regulation.
↑ The RES Directive 2009/28/EC comprises the definition of the Gross Final Consumption of Energy.
↑ Statements made in this document should be considered preliminary, reflecting the present state of the draft proposal. An assessment may be needed once the Directive is adopted, on the basis of the finally agreed legal text.
↑ Primary energy consumption corresponds to Gross Inland Consumption (GIC) net of the Non-Energy Use (NEU). The Energy Statistics Regulation may be consulted for the definition of GIC, NEU and FEC.
↑ CO2 emissions account for more than 80% of the total greenhouse gas emissions.
↑ The Eurostat Pocketbook on "Energy, Transport and Environment Indicators" comprises extensive information on the supply and demand of energy commodities in the EU and the Member States.
↑ Important actions already implemented/finalised before the 2006 Green paper on energy, in particular those arising from the network industries liberalisation, were not included.

[1] In addition to these statistics which are collected and disseminated by Eurostat, the Commission also collects information on the main characteristics of projects under construction/planned (Regulation 617/2010), weekly consumer prices of oil products (Decision 1999/280/EC) as well as monthly oil stocks to confirm that minimum stockholding obligations (Directive 2006/67EC) are respected. The Energy Market Observatory also acquires data provided by commercial companies.

[2] Joint Annual Questionnaires are the electronic questionnaires – common with the IEA – used to report annual statistics under the Energy Statistics Regulation.

[3] The RES Directive 2009/28/EC comprises the definition of the Gross Final Consumption of Energy.

[4] Statements made in this document should be considered preliminary, reflecting the present state of the draft proposal. An assessment may be needed once the Directive is adopted, on the basis of the finally agreed legal text.

[5] Primary energy consumption corresponds to Gross Inland Consumption (GIC) net of the Non-Energy Use (NEU). The Energy Statistics Regulation may be consulted for the definition of GIC, NEU and FEC.

[6] CO2 emissions account for more than 80% of the total greenhouse gas emissions.

[7] The Eurostat Pocketbook on "Energy, Transport and Environment Indicators" comprises extensive information on the supply and demand of energy commodities in the EU and the Member States.

[8] Important actions already implemented/finalised before the 2006 Green paper on energy, in particular those arising from the network industries liberalisation, were not included.

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