IDEES energy system database gets updated to improve analyses of policy assessments

Image showing power grid — © yelantsevv, stock.adobe.com

To better understand the current state of the energy system and support decision-making for climate, energy and transport policy, researchers and policy analysts require a wide range of data.

For instance, they need to know how much energy different transport technologies consume in different Member States, and determine the potential for improvement in the future, based on the advancements made in these technologies over the past few decades.

Facilitating this data collection and offering a solid starting point for researchers and analysts, the JRC has published an updated version of its open-access Integrated Database of the European Energy System (JRC-IDEES), which consolidates a wealth of information, providing a granular breakdown of energy consumption and emissions.

This comprehensive approach, which was also employed to support the European Commission's recommendations on climate action by 2040, offers valuable insights into the dynamics shaping the European energy landscape, facilitating the assessment of past policies, technological advancements, structural shifts, and macroeconomic factors.

Harmonised approach

First released in 2018, JRC-IDEES harmonises existing statistics with extensive technical assumptions to describe the recent history of all key sectors of the energy system: industry, the building sector, transport, and power generation.

For each Member State, it breaks the energy use and emissions of each of these sectors down to the level of specific processes or technologies. This level of detail enables a granular analysis of recent changes in the energy system, for instance to assess past policies, technology dynamics, structural changes, and macro-economic factors.

Since its initial release, JRC-IDEES has played an important role in EU research and policy analysis, serving as the primary data source for the JRC's Policy Oriented Tool for Energy & Climate Change Impact Assessment (POTEnCIA model).

New features

The latest update expands the time coverage of the database from 2000 to 2021 and incorporates new statistical sources as well as feedback from the user community. One key improvement is making the dataset easier to use within automated data workflows, so that researchers can better integrate JRC-IDEES into their analyses.

The data is freely accessible under the Creative Commons BY 4.0 license, ensuring that it can be used by a wide range of stakeholders.

A technical report summarises the statistics and assumptions used to compile the database