Energy Balance¶
General Information
An energy balance provides a detailed and comprehensive overview of the energy situation in a specific country or region. The energy balance provides all relevant information to describe all end-use sectors (agriculture, commercial, industry, residential and transport) for an energy system model. Several pieces of information are contained:
Energy Production and Sources: It shows the total energy produced within a country (or region), including the breakdown of different energy sources (e.g. oil, natural gas, coal, renewables, and nuclear power). This helps in understanding a country’s energy mix and its dependence on specific energy sources.
Energy Imports and Exports: The balance details the amounts of energy imported and exported. This information is crucial for understanding a country’s energy dependency on other nations and its role in the global energy market.
Energy Transformation: It tracks how primary energy sources (e.g. crude oil or natural gas) are converted into secondary forms of energy (e.g. electricity or refined petroleum products) that are more usable for end-use sectors.
Energy Consumption: The balance provides data on the total energy consumption, as well as the distribution of this consumption across different sectors such as residential, industrial, transportation, and commercial. It can also show the efficiency of energy use in these sectors.
Depending on the level of modelling, the energy balance does not support the degree on detail. Therefore, some further expert information is necessary in order to build up a full model.
TIAM uses energy balance provided by the International Energy Agency (IEA). There is an open data energy balance that gives an overview of energy production and transformation.
In addition, an extended version of the energy balances is available, also provided by the IEA. This version also provides all important energy flows that are necessary to describe a large energy system model as TIAM. The extended version is publicly available, but needs the right permissions.