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Limitations

Energy supply and demand are widely used international proxies for the pressures of energy production and use on the environment. By understanding the total amount of energy supply and demand, the intensity at which it is being used in the economy, and the types of fuels being used, we can learn more about the scale and types of pressures energy production and use are placing on our environment.

However, there are limitations to the use of these measures. For one, these indicators are only proxies to the environmental impacts associated with energy supply and demand. They have the ability to highlight likely trends in environmental impacts but do not comprehensively cover the specific environmental impacts associated with the specific forms of energy production and use.

Secondly, while these indicators highlight the environmental impacts associated with energy production and use, they do not provide an evaluation between these various environmental impacts. For example, the localised environmental impacts of geothermal energy are not evaluated against the global impacts of greenhouse gas emissions from fossil fuel combustion.

Finally, recent work conducted by the Ministry of Economic Development has highlighted a limitation in the data regarding the use of liquid fuels in the economy. Because of assumptions regarding the ‘on’-road use of unallocated fuels, the data used in this report card is likely to over-allocate liquid fuel use to transport, with a corresponding under-allocation of liquid fuel use to the agriculture, forestry and mining and industrial sectors. This also has flow on effects to the calculations of both industry specific greenhouse gas emissions and energy intensity. Changes made by the Ministry of Economic Development to the collection of liquid fuel data will likely lead to a correction of these figures in the future.

Last updated: 24 July 2009