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Physical energy flow accounts (env_pefa)

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Compiling agency: Eurostat, the Statistical Office of the European Union

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Physical energy flow accounts (PEFA) is one module of the European environmental-economic accounts - Regulation (EU) 691/2011 Annex VI.

PEFA record the flows of energy (in terajoules)

  • from the environment to the economy (natural inputs),
  • within the economy (products), and
  • from the economy back to the environment (residuals),

using the accounting framework of physical supply and use tables.

PEFA provide information on energy flows arranged in a way fully compatible with concepts, principles, and classifications of national accounts – thus enabling integrated analyses of environmental, energy and economic issues e.g. through environmental-economic modelling. PEFA complement the traditional energy statistics, balances and derived indicators which are the main reference data source for EU energy policies.

This metadata refers to three PEFA datasets based on the same data collection:

  • Energy supply and use by NACE Rev. 2 activity (env_ac_pefasu), containing data on supply (table A), use (table B), transformation use (table B1), end use (table B2) and emission-relevant use (table C)
  • Key indicators of physical energy flow accounts by NACE Rev. 2 activity (env_ac_pefa04)
  • Physical energy flow accounts totals bridging to energy balances totals (env_ac_pefa05)

17 April 2024

Physical energy flow accounts (PEFA) are conceptually rooted in the System of Environmental-Economic Accounting (SEEA) which is an international statistical standard. The SEEA central framework provides standard concepts, definitions, classifications, accounting rules and tables for the provision of statistics on the environment and its relationship with the economy.

PEFA constitute satellite accounts to the National Accounts (NA). Hence, the statistical concepts and definitions of PEFA are derived from those of NA.

As far as applicable PEFA is also compliant with the statistical concepts and definitions internationally established for energy statistics: the International Recommendations for Energy Statistics (IRES).

Three concepts are essential to PEFA:

  • the concept of three generic types of energy flows as established in SEEA, namely:
    • natural energy inputs: flows from the natural environment into the econmy such as fossil energy carriers in solid, liquid and gaseous form, biomass, solar radiation, kinetic energy in form of hydro and wind, geothermal heat etc.;
    • energy products: output flows from production processes as defined in national accounts (ESA); typically products produced by extractive industries, refineries, power plants etc.;
    • energy residuals: mainly energy in form of dissipative heat arising from the end use of energy products, flowing from the economy into the natural environment.
  • the accounting framework of (physical) supply and use tables as established in NA and SEEA;
  • the residence principle as established in NA and SEEA, i.e. PEFA records energy flows related to resident unit's activities, regardless where those occur geographically.

The PEFA manual provides more details on the conceptual foundations of PEFA and includes all relevant definitions.

Data refer to activities of resident economic units in the sense of SEEA central framework (SEEA CF 2012) and National Accounts (NA), including households.

The national economy is as defined in SEEA CF 2012 and National Accounts (NA); i.e. all economic activities undertaken by resident units (see ESA 2010, paragraph 2.04). A unit is said to be a resident unit of a country when it has a centre of economic interest in the economic territory of that country, that is, when it engages for an extended period (1 year or more) in economic activities in that territory.

EU Member States, EFTA countries, EU candidate countries and potential candidates. (limited to data availability)

The data refer to the calendar year.

The overall accuracy is considered to be good but cannot be quantified.

Terajoule (TJ)

Methodology for the estimates of EU aggregates:

Eurostat derives EU aggregates bottom-up, i.e. by summing up country data, except for imports and exports of energy products, for which a special methodology is applied as described in the following:

The imports and exports of energy products as reported by EU Member States include two components: an intra-EU and an extra-EU component. The former denotes trade with other EU Member States, while the latter concerns trade with non-EU countries. From the perspective of the aggregated EU economy, only the extra-EU component is relevant, and the intra-EU components need to be ignored. This calls for an adjustment to the standard bottom-up approach (sum of 27 Member States values) in the case of imports and exports of energy products.

Eurostat uses exisiting European statistics on the annual trade of energy products by trade partner (nrg_t) to derive extra-EU shares, which are applied to the standard bottom-up EU sum. These coefficients are specific for country, energy product, trade type (import or export), and time.

 

PEFA are compiled combining a variety of (often administrative) data sources (e.g. national energy statistics) and auxiliary information. The compilation process may include estimation procedures.

Data are disseminated annually.

Every year by the 30 September, Member States have to transmit to Eurostat data for the pre-previous reference year, i.e., with a timeliness of T+21 months.

After validation Eurostat will publish the data in December of the sameyear. (i.e. T+24m).

The comparability across countries is good due to clear statistical concepts and definitions. However, the national data sources used by National Statistical Institutes may differ in scope and quality.

Time series are available only for a limited number of countries, but their comparability over time is good due to consistent production based on clear statistical concepts and definitions.