Reference metadata describe statistical concepts and methodologies used for the collection and generation of data. They provide information on data quality and, since they are strongly content-oriented, assist users in interpreting the data. Reference metadata, unlike structural metadata, can be decoupled from the data.
European Commission - Eurostat Unit ESTAT.E.5: Energy L-2920 Luxembourg
1.6. Contact email address
Restricted from publication
1.7. Contact phone number
Restricted from publication
1.8. Contact fax number
Restricted from publication
2.1. Metadata last certified
3 February 2025
2.2. Metadata last posted
3 February 2025
2.3. Metadata last update
3 February 2025
3.1. Data description
The energy balance is the most complete statistical accounting of energy products and their flow in the economy. The energy balance allows users to see the total amount of energy extracted from the environment, traded, transformed and used by different types of end-users. It also allows seeing the relative contribution of each energy carrier (fuel, product). The energy balance allows studying the overall domestic energy market and monitoring impacts of energy policies. The energy balance offers a complete view on the energy situation of a country in a compact format, such as on energy consumption of the whole economy and of individual sectors. The energy balance presents all statistically significant energy products (fuels) of a country and their production, transformation and consumption by different type of economic actors (industry, transport, etc.). Therefore, an energy balance is the natural starting point to study the energy sector.
Annual data collection cover in principle the EU Member States, EFTA, EU candidate countries, and potential candidate countries. Time series starts mostly in year 1990.
All data in energy balances are presented in terajoules, kilotonnes of oil equivalent and gigawatt hours.
3.2. Classification system
Energy statistics is an integral part of the European system of statistics. Therefore, they also rely on classifications and nomenclatures developed in other fields.
The classification of the economic activities both in carrying out the surveys and in presenting the results is in accordance to NACE Rev.2.
Classification of energy products (commodities/carriers) is in general highly consistent with the UN’s International Recommendations for Energy Statistics (especially its chapter 3: “Standard International Energy Product Classification”).
3.3. Coverage - sector
Energy statistics data covers all major sectors of the economy that are involved in the production, trade, energy transformation or energy consumption (e.g. energy sector, industrial sector, transport, commercial and public services, agricultural/forestry/fishing and households, for annual data).
For further detail information on divisions, groups or class please consult the reporting instructions for annual energy questionnaires.
For energy balances, the methodology is not harmonised at international level - international organisations as well as national administrations apply various approaches when constructing energy balance.
The statistical unit may vary in the annual energy statistics. A statistical unit in energy statistics can be for example: enterprises, local units, establishment or household.
Reporting units in energy statistics might be: producers, importers, exporters of oil and petroleum products, households.
Not available - not produced by Eurostat. Specific national information can be found in the national metadata files built on the basis of the national quality reports.
3.7. Reference area
Annual data series cover in principle all Member States of the European Union, EEA EFTA States, all EU candidate countries and all potential candidate countries. This includes energy data for Energy Community Contracting Parties. Data for UK are available only for period 1990-2019. The EU total aggregates is also shown.
3.8. Coverage - Time
Annual data are available from 1990 for the vast majority of countries.
3.9. Base period
The concept of base period is not applicable for energy statistics as there is no “index number” or a “constant series”.
Basic data on energy quantities are given in fuel specific units e.g. solid and liquid fuels in thousand tonnes, electricity in gigawatt hours, heat and gases in terajoules (TJ). The basic energy quantities data are converted to energy units, i.e. in terajoules and tonnes of oil equivalent to allow comparison of different fuel types.
Units in which countries provide data to Eurostat are defined in Annex B of Regulation (EC) No 1099/2008 on energy statistics. Until reference year 2016 all figures reported are rounded to the nearest whole number. As of reference year 2017, reporting countries can provide data up to 3 decimal places. Some countries provided more decimal places as part of the revision of their historic time series. Some countries opted for continuing reporting with zero decimal places.
The statistical data collection system in the annual energy questionnaires cannot distinguish between the following cases:
Data are not available to the reporting authority
Data are confidential and not shown
Energy quantity is a real zero (aka no consumption)
Consumption is negligible (quantity is less than half of the smallest national unit used for reporting)
All these cases are shown as “zero” in the annual energy questionnaire and as "0.000" in the datasets for energy balances.
Flag Z indicated logically non-feasible combinations of energy balance and also combinations that are not covered by the reporting templates (countries do not report these data points).
Annual energy statistics refer to the calendar year (January - December).
6.1. Institutional Mandate - legal acts and other agreements
Data are compiled under the standard collection cycles of the "Energy Statistics Unit” according to Regulation (EC) No 1099/2008 on energy statistics (and its amendments). This legal text provides the framework for the production, transmission, evaluation and dissemination of annual energy statistics in its Annex B. This legislation also defines the scope, units, reported period, frequency, deadline and transmission modalities for the annual energy statistics.
Harmonised annual energy questionnaires are used - five annual questionnaires (Eurostat – OECD/IEA – UNECE questionnaires) that contain detailed explanatory notes on the accounting conventions to be used for each fuel type. These conventions are agreed and reviewed regularly by the three organisations using these questionnaires.
In general, the energy statistics transmitted to Eurostat is coherent with the International Recommendations for Energy Statistics (IRES) adopted by the United Nations Statistical Commission in 2011. The methodology for constructing energy balances is also coherent with IRES.
6.2. Institutional Mandate - data sharing
Not applicable. Eurostat does not have any agreements or procedures in place for data sharing of annual energy statistics. Eurostat copyright rules applies: free re-use, both for non-commercial and commercial purposes.
7.1. Confidentiality - policy
Regulation (EC) No 223/2009 on European statistics (recitals 23-27, 31-32 and Articles 20-26) applies also to energy statistics. It stipulates the need to establish common principles and guidelines ensuring the confidentiality of data used for the production of European statistics and the access to those confidential data with due account for technical developments and the requirements of users in a democratic society.
7.2. Confidentiality - data treatment
Confidential data are not shown. The most common approach is to present only aggregation of the confidential data point with the non-confidential data that is the nearest suitable data point.
The confidentiality is applied by reporting countries before transmission of the annual energy questionnaires to Eurostat, as this helps reporting countries to ensure all confidentiality aspects vis-à-vis the release of their national data and ensures the aspects of secondary confidentiality.
8.1. Release calendar
According to Regulation (EC) No 1099/2008 on energy statistics, annual energy statistics need to be published by 31 January of the year Y+2 (Y being the reference year of data). In other words, 13 months after the end of the reference year. The same time schedule is applied to the dissemination of energy balances calculated by Eurostat.
In practise, data are disseminated as soon as validated. The first release of energy balances for EU Member States and EU aggregate is usually in December Y+1 (i.e. 12 months after the end of reference year).
In line with the Community legal framework and the European Statistics Code of Practice Eurostat disseminates European statistics on Eurostat's website (see item 10 - 'Accessibility and clarity') respecting professional independence and in an objective, professional and transparent manner in which all users are treated equitably. The detailed arrangements are governed by the Eurostat protocol on impartial access to Eurostat data for users.
All new data are disseminated as soon as energy balances are calculated from validated annual energy statistics. Dissemination is on annual basis (at least once per year).
10.1. Dissemination format - News release
News releases on-line. Please find information at this website (Eurostat).
The concept of microdata is not applicable for energy statistics. No micro data are transmitted to Eurostat for data collected under Regulation (EC) No 1099/2008 on energy statistics. All micro data are available only at the level of reporting countries.
10.5. Dissemination format - other
Eurostat has developed several interactive tools to visualise energy data and related indicators. This includes a dedicated tool for energy balances and energy flow charts (also called Sankey diagrams). Please note that the Sankey dataset is an auxiliary dataset to make the Sankey tool more efficient. Therefore its scope is limited and it is not recommended to use this dataset for a purpose which is not in relation to the Sankey tool.
The interactive publication Shedding light on energy in the EU. This publication aims to answer questions on energy most frequently asked by citizens in an original way. Answers are provided through short texts, dynamic infographics, maps, videos, graphs, photos etc. This digital publication provides the statistical background that helps to better understand the challenges faced by the Energy Union. Both those not so familiar with the energy sector and experts in the domain should find something of interest.
Eurostat carries out quality tests, mainly on the coherency of the provided information. In addition, the questionnaires used for data transmission also have built-in coherency tests.
Energy data are subject to several validation checks, among which the time series checks, the consistency & completeness checks, plausibility checks, energy transformation efficiency checks and other checks corresponding to levels 0-3 of the ESS.VIP on validation. Validation on levels 4-5 is not consistently performed.
If there are any doubts as regards data quality, Eurostat contacts reporting countries to provide necessary justifications or corrections.
12.1. Relevance - User Needs
The energy balance is a multi-purpose tool to:
Provide harmonised comprehensive information on the energy supply and demand in order to understand the energy security situation, the effective functioning of energy markets and other relevant policy goals, as well as to formulate energy policies;
Provide the essential basis for calculating various indicators, including indicators monitoring progress towards Energy Union and Europe 2030 targets (energy efficiency indicators, share of renewable energy, energy dependency, etc.);
Ensure comparability of statistical information between different reference periods and between different countries/regions;
Provide data for the calculation of greenhouse gas emissions from fuel combustion;
Serve as a quality tool to ensure completeness, consistency and comparability of energy statistics;
Provide an input for modelling and forecasting.
The United Nations Statistical Commission agreed on the use of energy balances as the key instrument to coordinate work on energy statistics and to provide data in a suitable form to understand and analyse the role of energy in the economy. Energy balance is the starting point for constructing several indicators, such as import dependency. Certain aggregates of the energy balance contribute to cross-domain indicators, such as energy intensity (energy input per unit of output (GDP)). More generally, a number of questions can be answered by looking at the data in the energy balance (such as the evolution of energy consumption by sector or efficiency of electricity generation from combustible fuels).
12.2. Relevance - User Satisfaction
Eurostat conducts two types of evaluations that assess Eurostat's performance in general:
Evaluations of the Community Statistical Programmes
Not available – information not produced by Eurostat.
13.1. Accuracy - overall
Eurostat receives disaggregated data that are used to countercheck the results and to ensure consistency with the total amount of energy consumption. The accuracy of the basic data depends on the quality of the national statistical systems and may vary from country to country. In several countries and for most energy commodities data provision by the companies is required by law. However, emerging liberalisation process in some countries may to some extent negatively affect accuracy in some cases. From time to time detailed surveys targeted to single sub- items (e.g. Wood consumption in households) are carried out to improve the methodology.
A “statistical difference” in energy balance can be an indicator of accuracy. High statistical difference indicate that some reported elements are inaccurate (or alternatively, some elements are not reported). However, statistical difference systematically equal to zero usually means less statistical information available for data compilation. In other words, due to the lack of statistical input (data) the methodology applied inherently hides the statistical difference within some other flow of the energy balance. More robust statistical systems where more information is available could produce small statistical difference and this should not be considered as indication of lower accuracy of such statistical systems.
While indirect indicators suggest overall accuracy of energy balance should be in general high, quantitative assessment of accuracy was not performed by Eurostat.
13.2. Sampling error
Not available – information not produced by Eurostat. Specific national information can be found in the national metadata files built on the basis of the national quality reports.
13.3. Non-sampling error
Not available – information not produced by Eurostat. Specific national information can be found in the national metadata files built on the basis of the national quality reports.
14.1. Timeliness
Annual energy statistics is transmitted from reporting countries to Eurostat 11 months after the end of the reference year as stipulated in Annex B of Regulation (EC) No 1099/2008 on energy statistics. As of reference year 2022, this changes to 10 months.
Eurostat should disseminate annual energy statistics 13 months after the end of the reference year as stipulated in Article 5(5) of Regulation (EC) No 1099/2008 on energy statistics. First revision of energy balances is usually disseminated 12 months after the end of the reference year (i.e. December Y+1) and the production cycle is usually completed in April Y+2 (i.e. 16 months after the end of reference year).
14.2. Punctuality
The average punctuality of annual data deliveries to Eurostat for EU Member States is presented in the table below (updated in July 2023 and considering reference years up to 2021). The first column indicate the number of months (end of the month) after the end of the reference period (calendar year). The second column indicates the percentage of completed data transmission – cumulative totals.
9 months (end September)
20%
10 months (end October)
30-35%
11 months (end November)
95-98%
12 months (end December)
100%
Disseminating deadline for EU Member States is in general met by Eurostat and data are disseminated during the last week of January and first weeks of February. In recent years, Eurostat disseminated complete energy balances always before the legal deadline and datasets in Eurobase were gradually updated by the legal deadline.
15.1. Comparability - geographical
Energy domain provides highly comparable annual energy statistics.
Data on energy is submitted on the basis of the annual energy questionnaires employing an standardised and internationally agreed methodology (Eurostat - OECD/IEA - UNECE). In general, the energy statistics transmitted to by Eurostat is coherent with the International Recommendations for Energy Statistics adopted by the United Nations Statistical Commission in 2011.
Eurostat verifies, to the extent possible, if the reported data respect the prescribed methodology. The underlying data collection methods are however the responsibility of the reporting countries. The methodology for reporting energy statistics is harmonised for all European countries (EU Member States, EFTA countries, EU Candidate Countries, Energy Community Contracting Parties) and also with the OECD energy statistics.
15.2. Comparability - over time
Comparability over time is ensured with a solid methodology harmonised on international level that is stable over long periods. Occasional breaks in time series are present due to the developments of statistical systems on national level and the level of detailed information (micro data) available at national level.
In general comparability is very high in last 10 years and for older periods slowly decreasing. In addition, introduction of new statistical information in the most recent data collections can lead to breaks in series until information is compiled and provided by reporting countries.
15.3. Coherence - cross domain
Not available – information not produced by Eurostat.
15.4. Coherence - internal
Energy balances are highly coherent with other annual energy statistics.
Data are checked in detail for internal consistency/coherence in full cooperation with the countries concerned. Details checks involve the consistency of time series, detection of outliers, efficiency of energy transformation processes and also checks on utilization factors.
Not available – information not produced by Eurostat.
17.1. Data revision - policy
To further specify the general Eurostat revision policy, the Revision Policy for energy statistics and the revision pre-announcement form are implemented on the basis of a gentlemen's agreement (both adopted during the meeting of the Energy Statistics Working Group in October 2015). It might be followed by the future amendment of the relevant legislation once the revision policy has been incorporated into national practice.
17.2. Data revision - practice
The revision practice effectively corresponds to the revision policy of the domain, as listed under sub‑concept 17.1 (data revision – policy).
The annual energy questionnaires in the MS Excel format provide data on the last reference year and revisions for the years before (maximum back to 1990). Revisions of entire time series can be made by reporting countries due to their national specific circumstances. These revisions are then reflected in the annual energy questionnaires and are also implemented by Eurostat in the energy balances. Whenever feasible, back-calculation is applied to provide break-free data.
Data are updated in case an error would be identified, if a reporting country transmits more up-to-date figures or if provisional data are modified into definitive ones. These revisions are then implemented (processed and published) by Eurostat in due time. Data may be published even if they are missing for certain countries or flagged as provisional or of low reliability for certain countries. They are replaced with final data once transmitted and validated. European aggregates are updated for consistency with new country data. Whenever new data are provided and validated, the already disseminated data are updated either right away or with the next regular production cycle, depending on the impact of the change.
Reported errors are assessed for seriousness to determine whether they should trigger a correction of already disseminated data. When relevant, reported errors are corrected in the disseminated data as soon as the correct data have been validated and energy balances reclaculated.
18.1. Source data
Data are obtained from the National Administrations competent for energy statistics. Depending on the reporting country and the specific annual process, the data providers can be:
National Statistical Institutes
Ministries
Energy Agencies
Professional Associations
Questionnaires in standardized electronic format are collected from the national authorities via data transmission over the Internet. Data files have to be transmitted by the reporting countries to Eurostat via the Single Entry Point (SEP) following the implementing procedures of EDAMIS (Electronic Data files Administration and Management Information System).
More information can be found in the national metadata files build on the basis of the national quality reports.
18.2. Frequency of data collection
Annual.
18.3. Data collection
All data transfers to Eurostat come via Single Entry Point of data, which is currently implemented by EDAMIS.
For national practices:
National competent authorities collect the data by using census, surveys, administrative data, association's data, customs data and also by modelling including interpolation and extrapolation. Even estimates are occasionally submitted if real data is not available. The mixture of sources differs between countries. More information can be found in the national metadata files build on the basis of the national quality reports.
For Eurostat:
The annual data cycle starts in July-August for the previous year's data by sending to reporting countries pre-filled annual energy questionnaires (email with MS Excel files attached). Starting in September, countries provide new data for the latest reference year and possible revisions for historical time periods. The legal deadline is 30 November (as of reference year 2022, the legal deadline will be 31 October). Data corrections and data revisions can arrive until April due to ongoing discussions on data validation issues and this might result in changes in disseminated data.
18.4. Data validation
All annual data are checked in detail for internal consistency/coherence in full cooperation with the countries concerned. Details checks involve the completeness checks, the consistency of time series, the detection of outliers, the efficiency of energy transformation processes, the checks on utilization factors, the energy transformation efficiency checks and others corresponding to levels 0-3 of the ESS.VIP on validation. Validation on levels 4-5 is not consistently performed.
If there are any doubts as regards data quality, Eurostat contacts the reporting country to provide necessary justifications or corrections.
Country aggregations, such as European Union and Euro Area are formed by the aggregation of data from individual countries.
Data are reorganised to the energy balance format and converted to common energy units when creating energy balance. For details on this process, please refer to the Energy balance guide and the Energy balance builder tool (both available on Eurostat website in the section for energy balances).
18.6. Adjustment
No adjustments of data are performed in a systematic way, because energy statistics are collected according to internationally harmonised methodology and standards.
For the construction of energy balance, missing calorific values are estimated by using the cascade system of choosing default calorific values – for details on this process, please refer to the Energy balance guide and the Energy balance builder tool.
More country specific information can be found in the national metadata files build on the basis of the national quality reports.
nrg_quant_esms - Energy statistics - quantities
nrg_cb_esms - Supply, transformation and consumption - commodity balances
The energy balance is the most complete statistical accounting of energy products and their flow in the economy. The energy balance allows users to see the total amount of energy extracted from the environment, traded, transformed and used by different types of end-users. It also allows seeing the relative contribution of each energy carrier (fuel, product). The energy balance allows studying the overall domestic energy market and monitoring impacts of energy policies. The energy balance offers a complete view on the energy situation of a country in a compact format, such as on energy consumption of the whole economy and of individual sectors. The energy balance presents all statistically significant energy products (fuels) of a country and their production, transformation and consumption by different type of economic actors (industry, transport, etc.). Therefore, an energy balance is the natural starting point to study the energy sector.
Annual data collection cover in principle the EU Member States, EFTA, EU candidate countries, and potential candidate countries. Time series starts mostly in year 1990.
All data in energy balances are presented in terajoules, kilotonnes of oil equivalent and gigawatt hours.
For energy balances, the methodology is not harmonised at international level - international organisations as well as national administrations apply various approaches when constructing energy balance.
The statistical unit may vary in the annual energy statistics. A statistical unit in energy statistics can be for example: enterprises, local units, establishment or household.
Reporting units in energy statistics might be: producers, importers, exporters of oil and petroleum products, households.
Not available - not produced by Eurostat. Specific national information can be found in the national metadata files built on the basis of the national quality reports.
Annual data series cover in principle all Member States of the European Union, EEA EFTA States, all EU candidate countries and all potential candidate countries. This includes energy data for Energy Community Contracting Parties. Data for UK are available only for period 1990-2019. The EU total aggregates is also shown.
Annual energy statistics refer to the calendar year (January - December).
Eurostat receives disaggregated data that are used to countercheck the results and to ensure consistency with the total amount of energy consumption. The accuracy of the basic data depends on the quality of the national statistical systems and may vary from country to country. In several countries and for most energy commodities data provision by the companies is required by law. However, emerging liberalisation process in some countries may to some extent negatively affect accuracy in some cases. From time to time detailed surveys targeted to single sub- items (e.g. Wood consumption in households) are carried out to improve the methodology.
A “statistical difference” in energy balance can be an indicator of accuracy. High statistical difference indicate that some reported elements are inaccurate (or alternatively, some elements are not reported). However, statistical difference systematically equal to zero usually means less statistical information available for data compilation. In other words, due to the lack of statistical input (data) the methodology applied inherently hides the statistical difference within some other flow of the energy balance. More robust statistical systems where more information is available could produce small statistical difference and this should not be considered as indication of lower accuracy of such statistical systems.
While indirect indicators suggest overall accuracy of energy balance should be in general high, quantitative assessment of accuracy was not performed by Eurostat.
Basic data on energy quantities are given in fuel specific units e.g. solid and liquid fuels in thousand tonnes, electricity in gigawatt hours, heat and gases in terajoules (TJ). The basic energy quantities data are converted to energy units, i.e. in terajoules and tonnes of oil equivalent to allow comparison of different fuel types.
Units in which countries provide data to Eurostat are defined in Annex B of Regulation (EC) No 1099/2008 on energy statistics. Until reference year 2016 all figures reported are rounded to the nearest whole number. As of reference year 2017, reporting countries can provide data up to 3 decimal places. Some countries provided more decimal places as part of the revision of their historic time series. Some countries opted for continuing reporting with zero decimal places.
The statistical data collection system in the annual energy questionnaires cannot distinguish between the following cases:
Data are not available to the reporting authority
Data are confidential and not shown
Energy quantity is a real zero (aka no consumption)
Consumption is negligible (quantity is less than half of the smallest national unit used for reporting)
All these cases are shown as “zero” in the annual energy questionnaire and as "0.000" in the datasets for energy balances.
Flag Z indicated logically non-feasible combinations of energy balance and also combinations that are not covered by the reporting templates (countries do not report these data points).
Country aggregations, such as European Union and Euro Area are formed by the aggregation of data from individual countries.
Data are reorganised to the energy balance format and converted to common energy units when creating energy balance. For details on this process, please refer to the Energy balance guide and the Energy balance builder tool (both available on Eurostat website in the section for energy balances).
Data are obtained from the National Administrations competent for energy statistics. Depending on the reporting country and the specific annual process, the data providers can be:
National Statistical Institutes
Ministries
Energy Agencies
Professional Associations
Questionnaires in standardized electronic format are collected from the national authorities via data transmission over the Internet. Data files have to be transmitted by the reporting countries to Eurostat via the Single Entry Point (SEP) following the implementing procedures of EDAMIS (Electronic Data files Administration and Management Information System).
More information can be found in the national metadata files build on the basis of the national quality reports.
All new data are disseminated as soon as energy balances are calculated from validated annual energy statistics. Dissemination is on annual basis (at least once per year).
Annual energy statistics is transmitted from reporting countries to Eurostat 11 months after the end of the reference year as stipulated in Annex B of Regulation (EC) No 1099/2008 on energy statistics. As of reference year 2022, this changes to 10 months.
Eurostat should disseminate annual energy statistics 13 months after the end of the reference year as stipulated in Article 5(5) of Regulation (EC) No 1099/2008 on energy statistics. First revision of energy balances is usually disseminated 12 months after the end of the reference year (i.e. December Y+1) and the production cycle is usually completed in April Y+2 (i.e. 16 months after the end of reference year).
Energy domain provides highly comparable annual energy statistics.
Data on energy is submitted on the basis of the annual energy questionnaires employing an standardised and internationally agreed methodology (Eurostat - OECD/IEA - UNECE). In general, the energy statistics transmitted to by Eurostat is coherent with the International Recommendations for Energy Statistics adopted by the United Nations Statistical Commission in 2011.
Eurostat verifies, to the extent possible, if the reported data respect the prescribed methodology. The underlying data collection methods are however the responsibility of the reporting countries. The methodology for reporting energy statistics is harmonised for all European countries (EU Member States, EFTA countries, EU Candidate Countries, Energy Community Contracting Parties) and also with the OECD energy statistics.
Comparability over time is ensured with a solid methodology harmonised on international level that is stable over long periods. Occasional breaks in time series are present due to the developments of statistical systems on national level and the level of detailed information (micro data) available at national level.
In general comparability is very high in last 10 years and for older periods slowly decreasing. In addition, introduction of new statistical information in the most recent data collections can lead to breaks in series until information is compiled and provided by reporting countries.
