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Physical energy flow accounts (env_pefa)

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National Reference Metadata in Single Integrated Metadata Structure (SIMS)

Compiling agency: Statistical Service of Cyprus (CYSTAT)

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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 national metadata refers to the PEFA questionnaire delivered to Eurostat: 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 (table D), and physical energy flow accounts totals bridging to energy balances totals (table E).

The PEFA questionnaire is available on Eurostat's website: https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/web/environment/methodology

29 September 2023

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:
1) The concept of three generic types of energy flows as established in SEEA, namely:
a) natural energy inputs: flows from the natural environment into the economy 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.;
b) energy products: output flows from production processes as defined in national accounts (ESA); typically products produced by extractive industries, refineries, power plants etc.;
c) 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.
2) The accounting framework of (physical) supply and use tables as established in NA and SEEA;
3) 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.

Data refer to activities of resident economic units in the sense of SEEA CF 2012 and national accounts (ESA), including households.

The national economy is as defined in SEEA CF 2012 and national accounts (ESA); 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.

The data refer to the calendar year.

CYSTAT follows the guidelines provided in Eurostat's PEFA Manual, which sets standard methods for the compilation of the data. Revisions are made on auxiliary information relating to energy and transport data and advancements are always pursued on allocation methods. Data are carefully examined after collection and compared to previous years' data collections. The number of errors is minimised by careful examination of the processing methods. Furthermore, plausible errors are traced by comparing annual changes on the data. The overall procedure is reviewed and any doubtful or non best-practice methods are re-assessed. Surveys for producing detailed energy use data for households are not available on an annual basis so improvements and revisions are expected every few years.

The unit of measure is terajoule (TJ).

Please see subsections below for details.

Data sources used to produce physical energy flow accounts are described in the following sub-concepts.

Data are disseminated annually.

The first and final estimates for reference year N are available at N+21 months. However, improvements in compilation processes may be applied later on that could affect the data of any of the years of the time series.

Data on PEFA are compiled according to harmonised guidelines provided by Eurostat and hence are comparable across EU Member States reporting to Eurostat. Application of the PEFA Builder tool also ensures comparability to a certain extent.

Please see the table in 15.2.1.1. in case there are any breaks in series.