On 1st December 2023, Istat releases the time series 2008-2021 on Physical Energy Flow Accounts (Pefa) of Italian economy, expressed in terajoule (tj), on its data warehouse (“National Accounts” theme, “Environmental Accounts” sub-theme, “Physical Energy Flow Accounts (PEFA)” section).
With this edition, the energy flows estimates for the year 2021 are released ex novo and those for the years 2019-2020 are updated. Similarly, for the indicator ‘Energy intensity of added value’ only the years 2019-2020 are updated and the year 2021 is added, while for the indicator ‘CO2 emission intensity of energy consumption’ the whole time series is updated as a result of the updated air emission data and the year 2021 is added.
Pefa allows analyzing in detail the energy metabolism of the socio-economic system and the interactions between natural system and anthropic system regarding supply, transformation and use of energy. It provides a complete representation (consistent with the system of national economic accounts) of energy flowing from environment to economy, within the economy and from economy to environment, distinguishing natural energy input, energy products and energy residues. For each energy flow, origin (supply) and destination (demand) are recorded, distinct for economic activities, households, accumulation, rest of the world and environment, using a matrix scheme based on the structure of Supply-Use tables of monetary National accounts.
In 2021, following the pandemic shock of the previous year, almost all flows record strong growth, although – in the majority of cases – not reaching the 2019 levels.
In 2021, the energy flowing into the national economy amounted is about 8.1 million terajoules (+7.5% than 2020), of which 17.7% is made up of energy withdrawals from the Italian natural environment (-1.9%, returning to the 2019 values) and 82.3% from imports of energy products (+9.8%). The energy flowing out the national economic system is also about 8.1 million terajoules (+9.1% than 2020) of which 17.1% is made up of exports of energy products (+10.7) and 82.9% from returns to the natural environment in the form of degraded and no longer usable energy (+8.7). The equality of energy flows into and out of the national economy indicates that the net energy accumulation in the economic system is almost zero in 2021.
The total energy consumption of the resident units (Net domestic energy use – NDEU) in 2021 is 7.0 million terajoules (8.8% higher than in 2020 and almost equal to the pre-pandemic value):
- 31.0% is attributable to households (for own account transport, heating and cooling, hot water and kitchen use, lighting and household appliances) and the remaining part to production activities;
- 4.5% is for non-energy purposes (NDEU_non energy); it is energy used to produce non-energy products (e.g plastic, bitumen, etc.) or to lubricate gears;
- 17.8% comes from renewable energy sources, but only 13.9% can be considered “modern” renewable consumption (that excludes the traditional use of biomass, i.e. the inefficient use of wood, charcoal and other organic matter by households for heating and cooking purposes); considering only consumption for energy purposes (NDEU_energy) these percentages rise to 19.6% and 14.6% respectively;
- 83.5% is air emission-relevant as it is carried out by combustion (+9.5% than 2020, but -1.3% than 2019).
Pefa data are – by construction – comparable with economic data of National Accounts and with other environmental accounts, resulting particularly suitable to using in integrated environmental and economic analysis. In 2021:
- the “Energy intensity of GDP” (ratio of NDEU to GDP) confirms the previous year’s value at around 4.1 terajoules per million euro of GDP (in chain linked values with reference year 2015);
- the “Energy intensity of value added” (ratio of NDEU_energy to value added) is 3.0 terajoules per million euro of value added (in chain linked values with reference year 2015), remaining stable for the total productive activities , while registering significant variations for each production activity;
- the “CO2 emission intensity of energy consumption” (ratio of CO2 emissions to NDEU_energy) registers increases compared to 2020 of 2.5% for the whole economy, 1.0% for households and 3.2% for total productive activities (with very different variations for different activities), while remaining at lower levels than in 2019 (-1.4%, -3.1% and -0.7% respectively).
For more information, please refer to the metadata.
Data are released on both I.Stat and IstatData (the new aggregate data dissemination platform that will gradually replace the I.Stat data access system; until the data transfer is completed, the two systems will coexist).
For information
Directorate for national accounts
Giusy Vetrella
tel. 06 4673 3236
vetrella@istat.it
Silvia Zannoni
tel. 06 4673 3109
zannoni@istat.it