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This is an article by ourworldindata, who aggregate a bunch of (mostly economic) metrics from countries around the world. It is common for energy use to be reported in that way on a country level. This looks like an explainer for the users of their website on what the terminology means.

It makes perfect sense when you think about who the audience for this data is, economists, planners etc. In those roles, the primary concern is the actual quantity of heat and electricity that the population needs in their homes and workplaces, and you need to be able to back that out to how much raw fuel that requires, or how much transmission capacity you need. You need to know this summary info so you know where the focus needs to be. At moment for instance, they need to know how much gas they need in storage tanks in Europe for this winter, and it's information like this that helps them figure that out.



I suppose having non-technical terms makes sense considering the audience, but I would still want the fine print (i.e. this article) to explain how the non-technical terms map to technical concepts.

At the least, I would prefer renaming the non-technical terms to be less abstract:

Primary energyGross energy or Raw energy

Secondary energyTransportable energy

Final energyDelivered energy

Useful energy (no change)


Not satisfied. Substances are fuel, not energy.




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