Statistics Finland

Economic Statistics

Services and industry

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FI-00022 Statistics Finland

FINLAND

European statistics on natural gas prices for household and final non-household customers.

Internal Eurostat classification system based on annual natural gas consumption bands and tax levels.

Household sector and final non-household sector (industry, services, offices, agriculture, etc).

Due to natural gas use by household customers is under the threshold value defined in the regulation reporting of these prices is not mandatory. 

The prices are collected in national currencies per GJ and according to different bands of consumption.

For the households sector, these bands are:

• D1: Customers consuming less than 20 GJ.
• D2: Customers consuming 20 GJ or more but less than 200 GJ.
• D3: Customers consuming 200 GJ or more.

For the final non-households sector, the bands are:

• I1: Customers consuming less than 1000 GJ.
• I2: Customers consuming 1000 GJ or more but less than 10000 GJ.
• I3: Customers consuming 10000 GJ or more but less than 100000 GJ.
• I4: Customers consuming 100000 GJ or more but less than 1000000 GJ.
• I5: Customers consuming 1000000 GJ or more but less than 4000000 GJ.
• I6: Customers consuming 4000000 GJ or more.

There exist 2 different levels of disagregation for semestrial and annual prices:

1- Semestrial prices:

These prices are reported twice a year and are divided in 3 levels:

• Level 1 prices: Prices excluding taxes and levies.
• Level 2 prices: Prices excluding VAT and other recoverable taxes and levies.
• Level 3 prices: Prices including all taxes and levies.

2- Annual prices:

These prices are reported once a year together with the data for the second semester and are divided into the following components and taxes:

• Energy and supply: commodity price for natural gas paid by the supplier or the price of natural gas at the point of entry into the transmission system, including, if applicable, the following end-user costs: storage costs plus costs relating to the sale of natural gas to final customers.
• Network cost: transmission and distribution tariffs, transmission and distribution losses, network costs, after-sale service costs, system service costs and meter rental and metering costs.
• Value added taxes (VAT): as defined in Council Directive 2006/112/EC.
• Renewable taxes: taxes, fees, levies or charges relating to the promotion of renewable energy sources, energy efficiency and CHP generation.
• Capacity taxes: taxes, fees, levies or charges relating to strategic stockpiles, capacity payments and energy security; taxes on natural gas distribution; stranded costs and levies on financing energy regulatory authorities or market and system operators.
• Environmental taxes: taxes, fees, levies or charges relating to air quality and for other environmental purposes; taxes on emissions of CO₂ or other greenhouse gases. This component includes the excise duties.
• All other taxes: taxes, fees, levies or charges not covered by any of the previous four categories: support for district heating; local or regional fiscal charges; island compensation; concession fees relating to licences and fees for the occupation of land and public or private property by networks or other devices.

In addition to these elements, the network cost is split into the respective shares of transmission and distribution. The relative share of consumption in the different consumption bands is reported by the countries and used to calculated the single national natural gas prices (weighted averages for consumer bands IA-IF and DA-DE) but not published because it could be used to re-calculate some confidential values.

Some of the taxes are refundable.

The policy of tax refunds to energy intensive companies

Later refunded excise duties are not taken into account for the target population and individual consumption bands.

Household and final non-household consumers divided into consumption bands.

Household customers: Not relevant for Finland as Member States shall not be obliged to transmit data on natural gas prices for household customers if the consumption of natural gas in the household sector accounts for less than 1,5 % of national final energy consumption in the household sector.

Final non-household customers: Data is collected from 50-60 natural gas and a few biogas users for final consumption. The data is excluding consumption of electricity producers and non-energy users and excluding LNG).

The reference area is the whole country (areas where is connection to distribution or transmission network).

Price data for Finland is available since 1995.

Not applicable.

Prices are reported in national currency (€) per GJ. However, Eurostat also calculates and publishes the prices in EURO and PPS (purchasing power parity) and do the conversion to kWh.
Relative shares of sub-component of the network component and consumption volumes are reported in percentages.

For semestrial prices, the reference periods are from January to June for semester 1 and from July to December for semester 2.

For annual prices, the reference period is the whole calendar year (from January to December).

At EU level:

• Regulation (EU) 2016/1952 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 26 October 2016 on European statistics on natural gas and electricity prices and repealing Directive 2008/92/EC (Text with EEA relevance).
• Commission Implementing Regulation (EU) 2017/2169 of 21 November 2017 concerning the format and arrangements for the transmission of European Statistics on natural gas and electricity prices pursuant to Regulation (EU) 2016/1952 of the European Parliament and of the Council (Text with EEA relevance).
• Commission Implementing Decision (EU) 2018/1734 of 14 November 2018 granting derogations to the Federal Republic of Germany, the Kingdom of Spain, the Italian Republic and the Republic of Cyprus as regards the provision of statistics pursuant to Regulation (EU) 2016/1952 of the European Parliament and of the Council (notified under document C(2018) 7465) (Text with EEA relevance).
• Commission Implementing Regulation (EU) 2019/803 of 17 May 2019 concerning the content of quality reports on European statistics on natural gas and electricity prices pursuant to Regulation (EU) 2016/1952 of the European Parliament and of the Council (Text with EEA relevance).

At national level:

• The compilation of statistics is guided by the general act of the national statistical service, the Statistics Act (280/2004, amend. 361/2013). Only the necessary data that are not available from administrative data sources are collected from data suppliers.

At EU level:

• Eurostat does not share the data collected with other organisation appart from its usual dissemination chanel (Eurostat's database, statistic explained articles and press or news release) .

At national level:

• Data is sent to eurostat.
• The natural gas prices for non-household consumers is disseminated in Statistics Finland’s web service.
• The statistics on natural gas prices for non-household customers is delivered to the IEA.
• Set of monthly statistics on natural gas prices are also sold to the customers.

The data protection of data collected for statistical purposes is absolutely guaranteed in accordance with the Statistics Act (280/2004), the Personal Data Act (532/1999) and the Act on the Openness of Government Activities (621/1999), as well as the requirements of the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (2016/679). The data materials are protected at all stages of processing with the necessary physical and technical solutions. Statistics Finland has compiled detailed directions and instructions for confidential processing of the data. Employees have access only to the data essential for their duties. The premises where unit-level data are processed are not accessible to outsiders. Members of the personnel have signed a pledge of secrecy upon entering the service. Wilful breaching of data protection is punishable.

 

Published data should not allow identification of single consumers.

The main method used for statistical disclosure control is cell suppression If only one or a few records contribute to the value of a certain cell, the value is to be suppressed. In addition to this, it also has to be ascertained that the cell value cannot be calculated by using the marginal sums of the table.

Statistics Finland’s release calendar lists in advance all the statistical data and publications to be released over the year. Statistical releases can be found under statistics-specific releases. Statistical data are released on the Internet at 8 am, unless otherwise indicated.

 The calendar is updated on weekdays. Statistics Finland’s release calendar for the coming year is published every year in December.

Statistics Finland’s main output, general statistics about society, is freely available to all on the Internet. Statistics Finland supplies the statistical information required by agreements and EU legislation to the EU and to international organisations free of charge. Statistics Finland also serves the users of statistical data with its  information services, some of which are supplied for a fee to customers’ orders. The goal of publishing is to make the statistical information produced by Statistics Finland available to users without delay.

Natural gas prices in Finland are published on a semestrial basis on Eurostat's website.

Before 2021: The price data is not released by Statistics Finland due to limited coverage (i.e.focus for price data excludes use in electricity and CHP generation of power plants and use for non-energy purposes. The Energy Authority publishes monthly statistics on natural gas prices for large end-users which data is used in national publications also at Statistics Finland.

After 2021: The bio and natural gas price data is published monthly to paying customers. Data is classified by consumption band, gas type and network type (transfer network customer or distribution network customer). Nationally published data includes all gas user purposes.

Data is also published quarterly at Statistics Finaland's network pages as part of the energy prices statistics. 

Publications are not available.

Database is available at Statistics Finlands network pages.

Not available

Statistics Finland's research services offer unit-level data, i.e. microdata, for scientific studies and statistical surveys. The releasing of microdata is subject to a user licence. The price of the assignment is determined on the basis of its extent, requirements and the mode of use of the data.

No other ways for disseminating the data.

No consultations within a statistical domain for a given time period.

Internal documentation exists.

Not available

Internal documentation on the statistical process.

The principles of the European Foundation for Quality Management (EFQM principles) are employed by Statistics Finland as its overall framework for quality management. The quality management framework of the field of statistics is the European Statistics Code of Practice (CoP). The quality criteria of Official Statistics of Finland are compatible with the European Statistics Code of Practice. The quality criteria can be found: http://www.stat.fi/meta/svt/svt-laatukriteerit_en.html. The good practices followed in the statistics are presented in Statistics Finland's Quality Guidelines for Official Statistics handbook.

Before 2021: The price data is collected directly from the four (five until S1/2019, company acquisition between data sources) main players of the Finnish gas markets. The coverage of the annually sold gas by these enterprises is over 85 %. The main player is serving clients at the biggest consumption bands and three distribution companies the smallest bands. Several meetings on implementing the gas prices regulation has been held with the main player of the gas market in Finland. All companies have received instructions with the semiannual questionnaire.

The received data is quality checked by logical checks and by comparing to the previous data. If necessary the respondents are asked for further information. Weighted average prices are calculated between retail and wholesale companies. Retail companies are weighted with equal weights because natural gas volumes are not reported by all players.

Respondents classify their clients based on the consumption bands and brand of industry. Biggest natural gas buyer may use gas for several purposes. The main purpose classifies the whole company.

After 2021:

Respondents send gas energy and transfer prices data as well as volume data to Statistics Finland every month. The purpose of gas use is also asked and classified in the data. The data is validated automatically by a SAS program. Inconsistent data rows are printed to a validation list. The validation criteria are big changes in energy prices, transfer prices or consumption volymes. Ratio between consumption volyme and estimated annual consumption is also calculated. Illogical ratios are checked and validated. If necessary the respondents are asked for further information. Weighted average prices are calculated based on the monthly consumption volumes.    

The data collection has been implemented specifically for fulfilling the requirements of European statistics on natural gas prices.

In Finland 60 % of total natural gas is used in combined heat and power (CHP) production in particular, which use is beyond the scope of price statistics. The prices collected based on the prices regulation are used by Eurostat and so far not published nationally.

After 2021 data is published monthly for paying customers and quarterly publicly as part of energy prices at Statistics Finaland's net pages.  

Before 2021: The price data is collected from one company which is the main player in natural gas market (importer, wholesale supplier and supplier to large end users) and three (four until S1/2019) biggest retail suppliers. Most of the natural gas goes directly to large end users via that company in Finland. Retail sales account for some 9% of the entire natural gas sales volume in Finland. Many of the natural gas retailers in Finland are relatively small having only dozens of customers.

LNG and biogas supply are excluded. Fairly small amounts of biogas are supplied into the natural gas network.In 2016, the first small-scale off-grid LNG terminal in Finland was taken into operation. In 2018, the second off-grid LNG terminal was also taken into operation. These LNG-terminals serve mainly local industrial users, maritime of use LNG and LNG trucks.

After 2021: The sample survey includes also some biogas users. The usage of biogas is still rather insignificant.

100%

Previously measurement errors are possible due to the specific statistical unit (i.e. price data shall exclude use in electricity and CHP generation of power plants and use for non-energy purposes).

New method separates different user purposes thus natural gas used for electricity and CHP generation of power plants and use for non-energy purposes can be easier excluded.

The sampling error is negligible due to the high percentage of the population covered by the sample in the biggest consumption bands. In the smaller consumption bands the representativenes of the sample is smaller and sampling error might somewhat affect the results. However the prices between different data sources are well in line as well as the price changes too.

Not available

Information is included in the sub-concepts S.13.3.1-S.13.3.5.

Before 2021: Respondents of the gas price inquiry represent more than 85 % of the gas consumption at scope of the gas price regulation. The main player of the natural gas market is mainly selling gas to the three biggest consumption bands. This company is included in the survey thus the coverage of the biggest companies is close to 100 %. Three smaller consumption bands are mainly represented by three biggest (previously four) biggest retail companies. The coverage of these bands is somewhat smaller.

After 2021: Respondents of the gas price inquiry represent 100 % of the gas consumption in two biggest consumption bands. Exact data on the representativenes of the four smaller consumption bands are not available.  

Before 2021: It’s not possible to differentiate different usage inside the company buying natural gas. Company might use the gas the purposes in scope of prices regulation but also for electricity generation or non-energy purposes. In these cases the main purpose classifies the company.

After 2021: Data is collected directly from the gas users and the data is reported classified to the user purpose. Over-coverage should not occur.  

Administrative data is not used.

Before 2021: The data is received at electronic format. Eurostat questionnaire for price statistics was translated and sent as such to the data suppliers.

After 2021: An electronic questionnaire is available to the data suppliers. The fill in the questionnaire once a month. The questionnaire includes request for data on energy prices, transfer prices, monthly consumption volumes and estimated annual usage of natural or bio gas. Questions about network type, user purpose and gas type are also asked (prefilled on the questionnaire and updated only when necessary. 

Missing data is imputed and non response error is estimated to be small.

Unit non-response rate is 0%.

Item non-response rate is 0%.

Not known

Not Applicable.

Before 2021: Natural gas providers that participate in the national data collection are requested to provide the natural gas price data within 6 weeks after the reference period. After arrival, the statistical office checks the micro-data for correctness, consistency and completeness and national averages are calculated and reported to Eurostat during the third month after the reference period.

After 2021: Data collection is carried out on monthly basis. The time lag for publishing the monthly prices is about 38-39 days after the reference month. National averages are calculated and reported to Eurostat during the third month after the reference period.

The first version of the natural gas price questionnaire for non-households for the 1st semester of 2019 was sent 92 days after the reference period.

The first version of the natural gas price questionnaire for non-households for the 2nd semester of 2019 was sent 86 days after the reference period.

The first version of the natural gas price questionnaire for non-households for the 1st semester of 2020 was sent 92 days after the reference period.

The first version of the natural gas price questionnaire for non-households for the 2nd semester of 2020 was sent 90 days after the reference period.

The first version of the natural gas price questionnaire for non-households for the 1st semester of 2021 was sent 92 days after the reference period.

The first version of the natural gas price questionnaire for non-households for the 2nd semester of 2021 was sent 90 days after the reference period.

In Finland, there are only about 23,200 customers in the natural gas market. The largest customer segment, (about 16,400 customers) consists of households who buy natural gas for cooking. However, the total natural gas consumption of this segment amounts to only 0,3 mcm (0.015 per cent of total consumption). In addition, consumption of natural gas in the household sector accounts for less than 1,5 % of national final energy consumption in the household sector which means that reporting is not mandatory.

Version 2 of the natural gas price questionnaire for non-households for the 2nd semester of 2019 was sent 90 days after the reference period, 3 days after the first version and still within the deadline.

Version 2 of the natural gas price questionnaire for non-households for the 1st semester of 2019 was sent 111 days after the reference period, 21 days after the first version and 21 day(s) after the mandatory deadline.

Mistake by one of the data suppliers was corrected.  

The legal deadline for submitting the questionnaires is the third month after the reference period.

Most of the first versions of the questionnaires have been delivered on time. 

Version 2 of the natural gas price questionnaire for non-households for the 1st semester of 2019 was sent 113 days after the reference period.

The data supliers represent well over the whole natural gas distribution network.

Not applicable

The gas market opened in Finland in the beginning of year 2021. Earlier the only gas importer, seller and distributer company was surveyed. Later the distribution network was sold to local actors.

From 2017 onwards the biggest distributors were added to the survey. After opening the gas market more players were involved and the natural gas price survey had to be rearranged in 2020/2021. Pilot stage of the end use gas price survey started in October 2020. From the start of the 2021 this survey became the primary way of collecting gas prices in Finland. It is a sample survey covering all big players in group I5 and I6. The other groups were sampled so that each group contained players evenly from smallerst users to biggest in each group based on the data from energy use statistics.

There are break in timeseries between 2020 and 2021 data.

2

Not applicable

Not applicable

Not applicable

Annual prices are coherent with semestrial.

Reporting burden is not measured.

Revisions in statistical data primarily aims to guarantee the use of correct data and ensure that erroneous data are corrected as efficiently as possible. Information on errors in the statistics is also given (and changed data are retained permanently). In addition, transparent correction procedures help maintain users' confidence in the producer of the statistics. Statistic Finland’s revision policy is described in Release guidelines.

The revisions are done in case of value or content corrections. Usually the changes are due to the data source. The erroneous data observed are corrected as promptly as possible. The most common reasons for the correction are inconsistent data due to erroneous reporting by data source.

Households gas prices collection: 0

Non-households gas prices collection: 0

The price data is collected directly by Statistics Finland.

The data was collected on a bi-annual basis before year 2021. After this data is collected monthly.

Until 2021: Data collection type: “Mandatory business survey with threshold”. The data on gas prices are collected from  suppliers which are significant from the point of non-household consumption. The suppliers are the main players in natural gas market (importer, whosaler and supplier to big end users and retail companies). Most of the natural gas goes directly to large end users via these companies in Finland. Suppliers transmits a completed form by email to Statistics Finland.

The reporting form follows the Eurostat’s Questionnaire with the same consumption categories.

2021 onwards: Data is based on a monthly sample survey from users of bio and natural gas. The survey covers 100 % of 2 biggest consumption bands and sample of lower comsumption band. The sample includes 50-60 companies in total.  

Consistency checks are carried out by comparing results between companies representing the same consumption band and data from previous month. Consistency checks are also done beased on the changes of volume and it's effect on the price data. If there’s a inconsistencies the data supplier is asked to confirm.

The received data is devided between energy and transfer prices and aggregated into consumption bands. 

Previously no imputation done. After methodological change in 2021 missing data is imputed. Imputation rate is less than 10 %.

No adjustment to the data.

Seasonable adjustments are not carried out.

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