Assessing the energy intensities of imports

Embodied energy intensities denote the amount of energy (direct and indirect) that is required to produce one unit of economic output. These embodied energy intensities should include imports. The energy intensities of imports are in most cases unknown and are therefore often neglected or assumed to be equal to the domestic energy intensities of similar products. Both assumptions introduce errors in the indigenously calculated embodied energy intensities. This certainly applies to countries with a relatively high contribution of imports and a specific economic structure. This article advocates to estimate the energy intensities of imports by means of the average energy intensities of the region in which the country is situated. In this context, different estimation procedures for the embodied energy intensities of imports are presented for a number of countries within OECD-Europe. (C) 1998 Elsevier Science B.V.