Energy Loss

Question

A student is trying to ascertain how energy loss is (or is not) accounted for during the supply and disposition process. I have appended the appropriate parts of his question to this message to further explain the difficulty. Basically, though, according to the student, it appears that loss is not accounted for, but it is a well-known fact that such loss does occur. Does StatsCan produce statistics that would account for this loss or is there a way that he can calculate the loss?

I’ve offered some non-StatsCan possibilities (e.g., industry associations) and tables Table 134-0004: Supply and disposition of refined petroleum products and Table 126-0001: Supply and disposition of crude oil and equivalent, both of which have losses and adjustments as a dimension, but it has not yet been determined whether these will be able to answer his question.


Answer

I have a response from the author division regarding energy loss.  Initiatially, they referred me to publication Table 57-003-X:

"In the Report on Energy Supply and Demand (catalogue number 57-003-X), tables 1-7 contain a row labelled "other adjustments" which, according to the Table Notes, includes losses and other adjustments."

However, I asked if it was possible to get separate figures for just the losses (not including any other adjustments).  They explained that it was possible for the student to calculate this as follows:


"In order to get the energy loss for a fuel, refer to table 128-0009. (for example - coal)

(Transformed to electricity by utilities = 1,152,315 terajoules) + (Transformed to electricity by industry = 115 terajoules) = 1,152,430 terajoules

then refer to table 8-1 in the RESD (57-003-X page 112) Electricity generated by coal = 108,091 megawatt hours X conversion factor 3.6 = 389,128 terajoules

The loss, in terajoules, to generate electricity from coal is 1,152,430 - 389,128 = 863,302 terajoules or 863,302 / 1,152,430 X 100 = 74.91 % loss

You can apply the same logic to the other fuel types to get the loss.

The energy conversion factors table is on page 119 of the Report on Energy Supply and Demand (RESD)."