Exempting renewables makes sense until they penetrate the market so much that there is a scarcity of the technology used for them or unless you are concerned about the cost of building the plants. Expenditures Should be Used. It has been noted that using expenditures rather than Btu is a way of accounting for the relative scarcity or associated losses of particular types of energy. However, if the concerns include the environment, it would be necessary to adjust these values to a social price. Aggregate Indicators Should use Primary Energy and Disaggregated Indicators Should Use Site Energy.
Primary energy is better than site energy in the construction of aggregate indicators.
At disaggregated levels, however, we may also be interested in site energy. Workshop participants seemed to understand that EIA faces budget constraints and cannot collect more detailed data and at the same time collect data more frequently. It would be better for EIA to publish data on 100 sectors of the economy every 5 years than to publish data on only 40 sectors every 3 years. Need Trend Data. Consistent time series are essential for this efficiency analysis or we will be misled by recessions.