The Arbeitsgemeinschaft Energiebilanzen (AG Energiebilanzen) – Working Group on Energy Balances (Energy Balances Group) was founded in Essen, Germany, on March 26, 1971, by seven federations of the German energy industry and three institutes active in energy management research. On July 22, 2004, the AG Energiebilanzen was reorganized into an association which was officially registered at the Local Court of Berlin-Charlottenburg on September 6, 2005. Currently (last update: November 2021), three federations of the energy industry and five research institutes are members of the Working Group.
The AG Energiebilanzen evaluates and assesses the existing statistics from all sectors of the energy industry from a scientific perspective, regularly prepares an energy balance on behalf of the Federal Republic of Germany every year, and makes this energy balance available to the public.
Such energy balances have the form of a matrix and provide a clear overview of the interrelationships in the energy industry. They, thus, permit not only statements to be made regarding the consumption of energy sources in the individual sectors, but also provide information on their flow from generation to use in the different generation, conversion, and consumption sectors.
In addition to its annually published energy balances, the AG Energiebilanzen also pursues the objective of providing the most up?to?date information possible on the trends in the energy industry to the public at large. This is done with estimates of the primary energy consumption which are either made for each quarter of the respective current year or through the submission of time series (evaluation tables) with very detailed and comprehensive sectoral data on energy consumption in the summer of each year which include the relevant data encompassing the respective previous year.
The AG Energiebilanzen closely cooperates with the Länderarbeitskreis Energiebilanzen – Federal States’ Working Group on Energy Balances, which publishes energy balance data for Germany’s federal states. And it also participates in the Arbeitsgruppe Erneuerbare Energien-Statistik – Working Group on Renewable Energies-Statistics (AGEE-Stat).
As a member in the expert committee appointed by the German Federal Government, the AG Energiebilanzen actively supports the monitoring process of the energy turnaround in Germany.
With their extended data services, the energy balances published by the AG Energiebilanzen assume a key role in Germany’s energy data system with regard to their structure and significance. They have, thus, gained a high level of acceptance.