European Commission - Eurostat

Unit E.5: Energy

European Commission - Eurostat
Unit ESTAT.E.5: Energy
L-2920 Luxembourg

The dependency of the EU on single providers has long been a topic of concern and a large component of energy security which tops the EU agenda. The EU has sought to improve energy security by building a resilient, interconnected and open internal market, while pursuing a multilateral and rule-based perspective. The current geopolitical events are highlighting the vital importance of controlling and decreasing import dependency. Energy dependence on imports of energy carriers exposes the European economy to volatile world market prices and the risk of supply shortages, for example, due to geopolitical conflicts. The risks increase with dependency on single countries e.g. determined by the supply infrastructure. There are several relevant EU policies for this indicator. The Energy Security Strategy outlines the need to enhance domestic energy production, including the need to increase local renewable energy production, energy efficiency and provide missing infrastructure.

The indicator is part of the EU Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) indicator set. It is used to monitor progress towards SDG 7 on affordable and clean energy. SDG 7 calls for ensuring universal access to modern energy services, improving energy efficiency and increasing the share of renewable energy. To accelerate the transition to an affordable, reliable, and sustainable energy system, countries need to facilitate access to clean energy research, promote investment in energy infrastructure and clean energy technology. 

Energy imports dependency shows the share of total energy needs of a country met by imports from other countries. The  rate shows the proportion of energy that an economy must import. It is defined as net energy imports divided by gross available energy, expressed as a percentage. It can be defined for all products total as well as for individual fuels (for example: crude oil, natural gas). All data are from energy balances.

Energy dependence = (imports – exports) / gross available energy

A negative dependency rate indicates a net exporter of energy while a dependency rate in excess of 100 % indicates that energy products have been stocked. 

By definition, all nuclear energy production counts as domestic production, regardless the origin of fuel for nuclear fission/fussion. In similar manner, all renewables and biofules count as domestic production, regardless the origin of feedstock (biomass or waste) from which it was produced.

Individual national data includes intra-EU trade. For EU aggregates, the net imports in principle cancel out all intra-EU trade (abstracting from statistical discrepancies in reported trade data: imports reported by country A from country B are not always exactly the same as exports by country B to country A).

[PC] Percentage

The calendar year (January - December)

The indicator is produced according to the high-level quality standards of European Statistical System. While indirect indicators suggest overall accuracy of energy balance should be in general high, quantitative assessment of accuracy was not performed by Eurostat. Please see Related metadata for details on accuracy of the source datasets used to calculate this indicator.

European Commission - Eurostat

Please see Related metadata for specific information on source data used to calculate this indicator.

Every year

Revisions several time per year are possible.

T+2 years

All EU MS

Data are presented for all EU Member States and several non-EU countries.

All EU MS

Data are comparable between all EU Member States and between other presented countries.

> 10 years

All  EU Member States have long time series; for some non-EU countries time series are shorter.

> 4 data points

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.

https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/web/energy/publications

Paper publications have been abolished.

Dissemination is maintained on Eurostat's database:

https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/web/energy/database

Information not available. Redissemination of this indicator is not monitored.

No flags are used in this indicator, please refer to source datasets for all specificities and particularities.
This dataset is not dynamicaly linked to source data and consequently data revisions are not immediately applied.