NO : WP-2022-018
AUTHOR : Manisha Jain
TITLE : Assessing the accuracy and adequacy of India’s national energy
balances: Implications for tracking sustainable development and
climate goals
ABSTRACT :
National energy balances are essential for estimating various socioeconomic and environmental
development indicators, including carbon-dioxide emissions. The Ministry of Statistics and Programme
Implementation (MOSPI) annually publishes India’s energy balance. However, the widely used source
of India’s energy balance is International Energy Agency (IEA). In this paper, I compare the data from
the two sources and find that MOSPI’s energy balance estimates are different from IEA’s. The estimates
of per capita energy consumption and energy intensity from MOSPI are 26% higher than IEA for
2019-20. Another issue in MOSPI’s data is the incomplete disaggregation of final energy consumption
by end-use sectors. Energy consumption from oil products reported in the non-specified category in
MOSPI tables is 40% of the total consumption. Due to this, the agriculture energy intensity is 33%
lower, and the transport energy intensity is 43% lower than IEA. India’s carbon dioxide emissions from
MOSPI’s energy balance estimate are 31% higher than IEA.
Keywords: Sustainable development, indicators, carbon dioxide emissions, energy balance table,
national energy statistics
JEL Code: Q4, K3, O13
Weblink: http://www.igidr.ac.in/pdf/publication/WP-2022-018.pdf
