Standard International Energy Product Classification (SIEC)

SIEC is the internationally agreed statistical classification of energy products, defined in full within Chapter III of the International Recommendations for Energy Statistics (IRES) — it is not published as a separate, standalone document [IRES, Ch. III, para. 3.2, PDF p. 34, 2018]. It arranges internationally agreed energy-product definitions into a four-level hierarchical statistical classification; see SIEC Classification System for the full scope rules, classification design and code list (Table 3.1).

Authorship and endorsement

The product definitions making up SIEC are the result of work by the Intersecretariat Working Group on Energy Statistics (InterEnerStat), reviewed and supported by the Oslo Group on Energy Statistics and the United Nations Expert Group on Energy Statistics [IRES, Ch. III, para. 3.19, PDF p. 40, 2018]. One exception: the definitions for nuclear fuels fell outside InterEnerStat’s scope and were instead provided by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) [IRES, Ch. III, para. 3.19, footnote 23, PDF p. 53, 2018].

Relationship to other classifications

SIEC categories are cross-referenced, category by category, to the Harmonized Commodity Description and Coding System (HS) and the Central Product Classification (CPC), to facilitate integrating energy statistics with other economic statistics — the HS correspondence is especially useful since international trade transactions in energy products are defined in HS terms [IRES, Ch. III, para. 3.2–3.3, PDF p. 34, 2018]. These correspondences are indicative rather than exact, since HS/CPC categories are often broader than the matching SIEC category [IRES, Ch. III, para. 3.4, footnote 17, PDF p. 34, 2018]. CPC and HS code descriptions are maintained by their respective custodians, the United Nations Statistics Division and the World Customs Organization (WCO) [IRES, Ch. III, Table 3.1 notes, PDF p. 39, 2018].

Related

• SIEC Classification System — SIEC’s purpose, scope rules, classification design, coding system and full code list
• Energy Products — the general energy-product definition that SIEC’s scope operationalizes
• International Recommendations for Energy Statistics — IRES, the standard defining SIEC in its Chapter III