Physical energy flows (Pefa) - Years 2008-2023

On 14th April 2025, Istat releases on its data warehouse (theme ‘National Accounts’, sub-theme ‘Environmental Accounts’, section ‘Physical Energy Flow Accounts (PEFA)’) the time series 2008-2023 on Physical Energy Flow Accounts (Pefa) of the Italian economy, expressed in terajoules (tj).

Pefa allows analyzing the interactions between natural system and anthropic system by providing 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.

Compared to the previous edition (January 2025), the year 2023 has been added ex novo and the indicator “Energy intensity of value added” has been updated, only for 2022 (in coherence with the National Accounts data, March 2025 edition).

In 2023, the energy flowing into the national economy amounted is about 7.7 million terajoules (‑5.7% compared to the previous year), of which 82.1% is made up of imports of energy products (which decrease by 7.1% compared to 2022) and 17.9% is made up of by energy withdrawals from the Italian natural environment (+1.5%). The energy flowing out the national economic system in 2023 is about 7.6 million terajoules (-3.1% compared to the previous year), of which 20.3% is in the form of exports of energy products (a fairly stable amount compared to 2022) and 79.7% is returned to the natural environment in the form of degraded and no longer usable energy (-4.1%). The difference between energy flows into and out of the national economy indicates that the net energy accumulation in the economic system is about 0.1 million terajoules in 2023.

The total energy consumption of resident units (Net domestic energy use – NDEU) in 2023 was 6.3 million terajoules (4.5% less than in 2022). Below is some information on the NDEU:

• 33.1% is accounted for by households (which reduced their energy consumption by 4.3% compared to the previous year) and the rest by production activities (-4.5%);
• 2.9% is used for non-energy purposes (NDEU_non energy): this is energy used to produce non-energy products (polymers, bitumen, etc.) or to lubricate gears;
• 19.7% of the energy consumed comes from renewable energy sources (-0.9% compared to 2022), but only 15.7% can be considered as ‘modern’ renewable consumption (that excludes the traditional biomass use, 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 20.3% and 16.2% respectively;
• 82.6% is air emission-relevant as it is carried out by combustion (-6.5% compared to 2022).

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 2023:

• the ‘Energy intensity of GDP’ (ratio of NDEU to GDP) decreases by 5.1% compared to 2022, reaching 3.3 terajoules per million euro of GDP (chain-linked values with reference year 2020);
• the ‘Energy intensity of value added’ (ratio of NDEU_energy to value added), calculated with reference to all productive activities, is 2.3 terajoules per million euro of value added (chain-linked values with reference year 2020), 4.6% less than in the previous year, with significant differences between individual productive activities in terms of both in the sign and in the value of the annual change (+1.6% for Agriculture, -9.1% for Industry and +5.3% for Services);
• the ‘CO2 emission intensity of energy consumption’ (ratio of CO2 emissions to NDEU_energy) registers an decrease compared to 2022 of 2.2% for the whole economy, 3.6% for total productive activities (with very different variations for individual activities), while it increase by 1.0% for households.

For more information, please refer to the metadata.

For information

Directorate for national accounts

Giusy Vetrella
tel. +39 06 4673 3236
vetrella@istat.it

Silvia Zannoni
tel. +39 06 4673 3109
zannoni@istat.it