Units Recommended for Dissemination

No specific measurement unit is recommended for national data collection — countries are free to choose whichever unit suits their own circumstances. Based on common practice, however, certain units are recommended for data dissemination; countries may use other units if they wish, provided they supply appropriate conversion factors [IRES, Ch. IV, para. 4.65, PDF p. 67, 2018].

Table 4.4 — Recommended units for dissemination

For each main category of energy product, the table below gives the recommended dissemination unit. Where no special note is given, a unit applies to both primary and secondary energy products [IRES, Ch. IV, para. 4.66, Table 4.4, PDF p. 67, 2018]:

Energy products	Dimension	Unit
Solid fossil fuels	Mass	Thousand metric tons
Liquid fossil fuels	Mass	Thousand metric tons
(Liquid) Biofuels	Mass/Volume	Thousand metric tons / Thousand cubic metres
Gases	Energy	Terajoules
Wastes	Energy	Terajoules
Fuelwood	Volume/Energy	Thousand cubic metres / Terajoules
Charcoal	Mass	Thousand metric tons
Electricity	Energy	GWh
Heat	Energy	Terajoules
Common unit (e.g., balances)	Energy	Terajoules
Electricity installed capacity	Power	MW
Refinery capacity	Mass/time	Thousand metric tons/year

Note that “Common unit (e.g., balances)” — terajoules — is this table’s dissemination-level restatement of the joule-as-common-unit recommendation; see Measurement Units.

It is recommended that countries report to international organizations both the physical quantities of fuels and their country-specific (and, where necessary, flow-specific) calorific values. For waste that is well-defined by its constitution rather than only by the process that generated it, specific calorific values are not expected to vary greatly, so data can be reported on a weight basis (thousand metric tons) — though specific calorific values should still be supplied where available [IRES, Ch. IV, para. 4.67, PDF p. 67, 2018]. See Calorific Values and Default Calorific Values for the specific-vs-default distinction and the default reference values this recommendation falls back on.

Related

• Measurement Units — original vs. common units and the joule-as-common-unit recommendation this table operationalizes for dissemination
• Calorific Values — the specific-calorific-value reporting this page’s closing recommendation depends on
• Default Calorific Values — the default values used when specific, flow-level calorific values are unavailable