IEA Publications Show How to Define, Measure and Use the Most Critical Data on Energy Efficiency

The International Energy Agency today released two guides aimed at helping countries around the world develop ambitious energy efficiency policies by showing policy makers, analysts and statisticians how to better track and use data on the so-called hidden fuel.

The IEA views energy efficiency as an important way to improve energy security and cut greenhouse-gas emissions in the decades to come. Yet measuring energy efficiency is not always easy: wide variations exist in the way data on energy efficiency are collected from country to country - if they are collected at all. In its inaugural Energy Efficiency Market Report last year, the IEA noted that more data on energy efficiency - and more robust indicators - were needed across the globe to help craft more effective policies.

The two new IEA publications address this challenge by providing the necessary tools to initiate and further develop in-depth, appropriate and reliable energy efficiency indicators to help countries set energy efficiency targets and track progress towards these goals.

"If the world wants to avoid a temperature increase of 5 or 6 degrees Celsius by the end of the century, then ambitious programmes of energy efficiency have to be launched in all sectors and in all countries," said IEA Executive Director Maria van der Hoeven. "The IEA's new manuals on energy efficiency indicators will help countries design and implement dynamic, viable energy efficiency programmes."

The first IEA manual, Energy Efficiency Indicators: Fundamentals on Statistics, is intended for statisticians and energy analysts collecting the needed information for the development of energy efficiency indicators. Inadequate resources, expertise, know-how and practices are often put forward to explain the lack of data and indicators. However, surveying, metering and modelling practices exist all around the world. Making these practices available to all is exactly the purpose of this manual. After having identified the most common sectoral indicators, the manual provides more than 160 practices used worldwide for collecting the data needed to build these indicators.

The second manual, Energy Efficiency Indicators: Essentials for Policy Making, is aimed at providing policy makers and energy analysts the tools needed to determine the priority areas for the development of energy efficiency indicators and how to select and develop the data and indicators that will best support energy efficiency policy making. In addition, the indicators provide a basis for international comparisons that can help identify best practices for effective policy design and implementation in countries.

By reducing or limiting energy demand, energy efficiency measures can increase resilience against a variety of risks, stress on energy infrastructure, and disruptions to energy supply systems.

Energy Technology Perspectives 2014, which the IEA published earlier this month, said that if governments are to meet the goal of limiting the rise in global temperatures to no more than 2 degrees Celsius this century in a cost-effective way, then energy efficiency will need to play a key role, contributing between one-third and one-half of all the required future energy and emissions savings.