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In the Brazilian federal administration, the Ministerio de Minas e Energia – MME (Ministry of Mines and Energy) is the office responsible for developing long term actions and indicate the potentialities of the energy sector, establishing and implementing sectorial politicies, formulating the principles and orienting national energy politics. To accomplish its objectives, MME promotes oriented studies and analysis to subsidy the energy sector planning, as those relatives to energy data and information.
As part of the institutional changes occurred in the Brazilian energy sector over the last years, in 2004 the Empresa de Pesquisa Energetica – EPE (Energy Research Company) was created as a federal company, according to Law 10.847, 15th March 2004.
As established in its creation law, EPE’s mission is to render studies and researches to subsidize the energy sector planning. This involves a broad spectrum of activities including studies in areas such as electricity, petroleum and natural gas and their derivatives, coal, renewable energy sources and energy efficiency, among others. As part of its attributions, EPE is responsible for publishing the Brazilian Energy Balance - BEB.
The Brazilian Energy Balance – BEB is a traditional document in the Brazilian energy sector, which annually divulges extensive research and accounting regarding the supply and consumption of energy in Brazil, contemplating the exploration and production of primary energy resources, their conversion into secondary forms, imports and exports, distribution and final energy consumption. One of the most complete and systemized energy data bases available in the country, BEB is a fundamental reference for any study of the Brazilian energy planning.
Published for more than 30 years by the Ministry of Mines and Energy – MME, in its 2007 edition (year 2006) EPE accomplished all operational activities related to BEB elaboration, supported by the Secretariat of Planning and Energy Development of MME, which had been responsible for drawing up and publishing the BEB until 2004 edition.
In each annual cycle, since 2005, EPE has been improving its instruments for consolidating energy statistics, highlighting in this last year the construction of institutional, corporative and technological tools necessary to the continuity of BEB’s quality level, besides improving the document itself, an additional challenge in an environment that each day presents more complex sectorial relations, with enlargement of the agents and energy sources covered.
The Importance of BEB
Even if the objective of the energy accountancy in BEB can be described in a simplified form, the magnitude of the process of data collection, treatment and analysis of country’s energy information to build an energy matrix for the base year is extremely complex. The main temporal determinant is the provision of data by the myriad agents and institutions.
The difficulties arising from this process of data collection are themselves a significant challenge, which intensity increases in a country with dimensions, diversities and characteristics of Brazil.
On the other hand, the recent rapid evolution of Brazilian energy matrix in the context of institutional changes, the diversity of the use of available energy resources, the different patterns in various regions of the country, the introduction of new technologies and the lack of regular statistics on the various forms of energy increase the effort required to draw up a statistical instrument such as BEB, in which the reality of Brazilian energy matrix is represented and production and consumption of different energy sources is properly quantified, primordially dependent of the quality of the information received.
Fundamentally, an energy balance does not produce primary data; it depends on the information received from other agents who generate the data as most of energy statistics originate from operations in public sector and utilities. However, a significant portion of these statistics refers to non-commercial energy sources, which do not have formal accounting instruments or are produced directly by consumers (self-producers) and thus do not appear in official registers, requiring BEB to take responsibility for originating this primary data.
Considering the temporal determinant of the process and the availability of data from agents and institutions that supply the primary data each year, the printed version of BEB with the completed and consolidated national energy statistics is traditionally published in the second half of the year following the base year that the data refers to.
Brazilian Energy Balance Information System
The necessary availability and celerity, reliability and quality, as well the range of basic energy information and statistics necessary for BEB elaboration have led EPE to look for ways to perfect data collection instruments, results consolidation, consistency analysis of parameters and the publishing of energy supply and consumption Brazilian data. This is taking place through the construction and implementation of a structured system for data providers management and processes automation, which has been called Brazilian Energy Balance Information System.
Associated to a data bank and consultation tools, and respecting confidentiality and privacy criteria of information provision, this system will allow users to access public data about energy offer and consumption in Brazil, interrelated in their essences. This will allow the formulation of varied presentations, segmenting information according to primary and secondary energy forms, production activities, stocks, foreign trade, transformation, distribution and consumption by economic sector.
Following the objective of strengthening the institutional character of BEB elaboration process, some actions are being implemented through studies contracted to EPE by MME, among which are noteworthy “Confidentiality Instruments to Energy Information for BEB”, and the approximation to Federative States to promote an integration and cooperation for publishing the States Energy Balances, aiming to optimize elaboration processes.
Furthermore, there have been noteworthy efforts by EPE to improve the instruments through the collaboration of those institutions directly related to the sectors of interest by getting closer to professional groups, agents in direct and indirect administration of the federal and state governments and public and private utilities.
It is worth highlighting the importance of clarifying to society and agents in energy sector affected by BEB that the research and studies carried out by EPE have the objective of foster sectorial planning in short, medium and long terms within basic premises of consistency for the optimization and integrated planning of resources for energy efficiency, reliable supply and the expansion of offer.
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