United States Industrial Sector Energy End Use Analysis

Abstract

The United States Department of Energy’s (DOE) Energy Information Administration (EIA) conducts the Manufacturing Energy Consumption Survey (MECS) to provide detailed data on energy consumption in the manufacturing sector. The survey is a sample of approximately 15,000 manufacturing establishments selected from the Economic Census - Manufacturing Sector. MECS provides statistics on the consumption of energy by end uses (e.g., boilers, process, electric drives, etc.) disaggregated by North American Industry Classification System (NAICS) categories. The manufacturing sector (NAICS Sector 31-33) consists of all manufacturing establishments in the 50 States and the District of Columbia. According to the NAICS, the manufacturing sector comprises establishments engaged in the mechanical, physical, or chemical transformation of materials, substances, or components into new products. The establishments are physical facilities such as plants, factories, or mills. For many of the sectors in the MECS datasets, information is missing because the reported energy use is less than 0.5 units or BTUs, or is withheld to avoid disclosing data for individual establishments, or is withheld because the standard error is greater than 50%. We infer what the missing information likely are using several approximations techniques. First, much of the missing data can be easily calculated by adding or subtracting other values reported by MECS. If this is not possible (e.g. two data are missing), we look at historic MECS reports to help identify the breakdown of energy use in the past and assume it remained the same for the current MECS. Lastly, if historic data is also missing, we assume that 3 digit NAICS classifications predict energy use in their 4, 5, or 6 digit NAICS sub-classifications, or vice versa. Along with addressing data gaps, end use energy is disaggregated beyond the specified MECS allocations using additional industry specific energy consumption data. The result is a completed table of energy end use by sector with mechanical drives broken down by pumps, fans, compressed air, and drives.