Energy Products

The term “products” is understood in energy statistics the same way as in economic statistics generally: it refers to all goods and services that are the result of production [IRES, Ch. II, para. 2.9, PDF p. 31, 2018, citing SNA 2008, para. 6.24]. Energy products are a subset of products.

Definition

As a general guideline, energy products are those exclusively or mainly used as a source of energy. They include forms of energy suitable for direct use (e.g., electricity and heat) and products that release energy while undergoing a chemical or other process, including combustion. By convention, energy products also include peat, biomass and waste — but only when they are used for energy purposes [IRES, Ch. II, para. 2.9, PDF pp. 31–32, 2018]. Full classification and definitions of energy products are given by the Standard International Energy Product Classification (SIEC) in Chapter III [IRES, Ch. II, para. 2.9, PDF p. 31, 2018].

SIEC scope precision

Chapter III precises this definition through the scope of the Standard International Energy Product Classification (SIEC). SIEC’s scope covers: (a) fuels — energy sources, primary or secondary, that must be subjected to combustion or fission to release their stored energy — produced or generated by an economic unit (including households) and used or usable as an energy source; and (b) electricity generated by an economic unit (including households), plus heat generated and sold to third parties by an economic unit [IRES, Ch. III, para. 3.7, PDF p. 35, 2018].

Three rules refine fuel coverage. All fossil fuels (coal, peat, oil and natural gas) are within scope whether or not actually used for energy purposes, except peat used for non-energy purposes, which is excluded. Products derived from fossil fuels are always within scope when used, or intended for use, as fuels. Products derived from fossil fuels but used (or intended) for non-energy purposes are within scope only if they are the output of an energy industry, such as a refinery, gas plant or coal mine [IRES, Ch. III, para. 3.8, PDF p. 35, 2018].

The refinery-output rule is illustrated by lubricants: although lubricants produced during crude oil refining are ordinarily put to non-energy use, their production and consumption are still recorded in energy statistics, since this lets compilers monitor the range of products obtained from refinery intake and assess how much crude oil is diverted to non-energy use — relevant to energy planners, provided non-energy consumption of these products is explicitly identified. By contrast, plastics are outside SIEC’s scope even though they may derive from a fossil fuel such as crude oil, because they are not themselves an output of the refinery but are obtained through further processing of refinery products by other industries [IRES, Ch. III, para. 3.9, PDF p. 35, 2018].

Non-fossil fuels such as waste, agricultural crops or other biomass are within scope only when actually used for energy purposes, so whether they count toward total energy production is derived from demand-side information rather than assumed from their origin [IRES, Ch. III, para. 3.10, PDF p. 35, 2018]. See SIEC Classification System for SIEC’s full classification design and code list.

Primary and secondary; renewable and non-renewable

Since a number of energy products are transformed into other energy products before consumption, IRES distinguishes primary from secondary energy products — a distinction needed for various analytical purposes, including avoiding double-counting of energy production in cross-fuel tabulations such as energy balances [IRES, Ch. II, para. 2.10, PDF p. 32, 2018]. Energy products can also be obtained from renewable sources (e.g., solar, biomass) or non-renewable sources (e.g., coal, crude oil); distinguishing the two matters for both energy planning and environmental concerns, as does distinguishing “infinite” renewable sources such as solar from cyclical renewable sources such as biomass [IRES, Ch. II, para. 2.10, PDF p. 32, 2018]. Full definitions of primary/secondary and renewable/non-renewable energy products are given in Chapter V and Annex A [IRES, Ch. II, para. 2.10, PDF p. 32, 2018].

Annex A provides both a compact cross-classification grid (below) and a full code-by-code status table for every SIEC heading, reproduced in full on SIEC Classification System § Annex A [IRES, Annex A, PDF pp. 158–161, 2018].

Cross-classification of primary/secondary and renewable/non-renewable products [IRES, Annex A, PDF p. 158, 2018]

	Primary products	Secondary products
Non-renewables	01—Hard coal, 02—Brown coal, 11—Peat, 20—Oil shale, 30—Natural gas, 41—Conventional crude oil, 42—Natural gas liquids (NGL), 44—Additives and oxygenates, 61—Industrial waste, 62 (partially)1—Municipal waste, nuclear heat, heat from chemical processes	03—Coal products, 12—Peat products, 43—Refinery feedstocks, 46—Oil products, electricity and heat from combusted fuels of fossil origin, electricity derived from heat from chemical processes and nuclear heat, any other product derived from primary/secondary non-renewable products
Renewables	5—Biofuels (except charcoal), 62 (partially)—Municipal waste, heat from renewable sources except from combusted biofuels, electricity from renewable sources except from geothermal, solar thermal or combusted biofuels2	516—Charcoal, electricity and heat from combusted biofuels, electricity from geothermal and solar thermal, any other product derived from primary/secondary renewable products

At the time of IRES’s publication no internationally agreed definition of renewable and non-renewable products was available, so this grid and the full status table are indicative and subject to amendment [IRES, Annex A, PDF p. 158, 2018].

Boundary of energy products

Delineating the universe of energy products is not always straightforward. IRES works through this with an example: corncobs can be (1) combusted directly to produce heat, (2) used to produce ethanol as a biofuel, (3) consumed as food, or (4) thrown away as waste. Under the scope of the SIEC, corncobs count as an energy product for energy-statistics purposes only in case (1) — direct combustion for heat. In the other cases, they either fall outside the boundary of energy statistics entirely (case 3, food) or enter the boundary as a different product (case 2, ethanol) [IRES, Ch. II, para. 2.11, PDF p. 32, 2018].

Related

• Scope of Energy Statistics — the broader scope (basic energy statistics and energy balances) that energy products sit within
• SIEC Classification System — the full SIEC classification design and code list that operationalizes this definition, including the full 113-row Annex A primary/secondary and renewable/non-renewable status table
• International Recommendations for Energy Statistics — the standard defining SIEC (Chapter III), which builds directly on this definition
• Standard International Energy Product Classification — SIEC itself, the classification standard
• Energy Balance — the accounting framework whose columns (E1, E2, E3, …) are populated with mutually exclusive groups of energy products (IRES Ch. VIII, tables 8.1–8.2)
• IRES Annexes and References — the Annex A digest this section’s cross-classification grid is drawn from