We need good data to make smart policy
Co-written with Andrew Eckhardt
Important decisions and policy designs should have clear, measurable targets – and be based on facts to fully comprehend the status quo. Europe’s energy policy is a crucial area of decision making at the moment as Europe’s future energy market design will play vital role in various dimensions. The geopolitical dimension of Europe’s energy policy has tragically been highlighted by Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. But in the medium and long term, aligning its economic and climate change dimensions will continue to be the key to a successful European energy policy.
But how about the information and data relevant decisions can be based on?
I've recently been using numbers from this site (https://energy-charts.info/) to discuss trend in German power generation. But I was pointed to this official site (https://www.bdew.de/service/anwendungshilfen/die-energieversorgung-2021/), from the BDEW (Federal agency for energy and water), which provides its own data - and the numbers are strikingly different! There's a 10 TWh/y difference for renewables but a 60 TWh/y (i.e. more than 10% of yearly production) gap for fossil fuel numbers. The BDEW report (footnote p23) uses data from 3 different, non-reconciled sources (including Germany’s Federal Statistical Office). Already between these two sources, numbers for gross electricity production, the share of renewable energy varies by a full percentage point.
A part of that may be explained by self-generation by big industrial sites, but that still seems like a huge gap - and it makes a big difference in terms of what policies regarding gas-fueled generation can be implemented or even considered!
Transmission grids and exchanges offer EU-mandated transparency site like https://www.eex-transparency.com/power (several countries) or https://opendata.reseaux-energies.fr/pages/accueil/ (France) but it seems hard to get consistent aggregated data (many of these sites earn their money by selling data and are obviously not too keen to make it too easy to get information for free).
So, wouldn’t it make a lot of sense for the EU and its member states to make reliable, harmonized data sets easily available to research and public policy debate?