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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: Hellenic Statistical Authority (ELSTAT)

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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

28 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.

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 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 reference area is the economic territory as defined in SEEA CF 2012 and national accounts (ESA). At national level data refer to Greece total.

The data refer to the calendar years. Last reported reference year is 2021.

Primary data on PEFA derive from the IEA/Eurostat/UNECE National Annual Questionnaires on Energy Statistics as provided from the Ministry of Environment and Energy of Greece. The estimation methods and data used for the compilation of energy questionnaires are validated by Eurostat. Overall accuracy relies, to a great extent, on the quality and completeness of the aforementioned validated data in energy questionnaires.

Additionally, PEFA final data are thoroughly validated by Eurostat including analytical checks on data coherence, extreme values, annual rates, revisions, e.t.c.

The unit of measure is terajoule (TJ).

PEFA are compiled using the recently released PEFA Builder v.5.7.1.

The main data sources used for the compilation of PEFA are the following

1) Energy Statistics
IEA/Eurostat/UNECE National Annual Questionnaires on Energy Statistics (Coal/ Gas/ Oil/ Electricity and Heat/Renewables and Wastes Questionnaires), for reference year 2021
2) National Accounts data: mainly Use table data for specific products used for the breakbowns into NACE secotrs (as analyzed below)
3) Structural Business Survey (SBS) data: certain information on petroleum products
4) Information needed for the implementaion of the resident principle (as explained below) using various surveys and datasets:
- OECD’s dataset “Air Transport CO2 Emissions”
- Freight Transport statistics from Eurostat database
- Balance of Payments data for water transport
5) For road transport allocation the following data sources were used:
- Air Emission Inventories
-“National and International Road Freight Transport” compiled by ELSTAT’s Transport Statistics Section
- SUT tables from NA
6) For distribution keys concerning Household end-use categories, data were provided by the dataset “Disaggregated final energy consumption in households – quantities” (nrg_d_hhq), as published in Eurostat's online database.

Data are disseminated annually.

The data are submitted to Eurostat 21 months after the end of the reference year. After validation data are published by the second quarter of the following year according to the release schedule of the Statistical Program of ELSTAT.

Data on PEFA are compiled according to harmonized international guidelines provided by Eurostat and hence are comparable across european countries that report PEFA to Eurostat.

Please see section 15.2.1.1.