Adding apples and oranges: The monitoring of energy efficiency in the Dutch food industry

This article develops indicators to monitor energy efficiency developments in the food and tobacco industry based on physical production data at the firm level provided by the statistics office of the Netherlands in a confidential basis. We measure energy efficiency by using an energy efficiency indicator which is the aggregate specific energy consumption. Our results show that the food and tobacco industry has improved their energy efficiency indicator in primary terms by about 1% per year (uncertainty range between 0.9 and 1.3). In terms of final energy, there has been a decrease on the indicator for final demand of fuels of about 1.8% p.a. while there has been no improvement in the indicator for final demand of electricity. The development in energy efficiency is coherent with the reported implementation rate of energy conservation projects. We conclude that the type and the quality of the data compiled by Statistics Netherlands for the food sector is sufficient to develop indicators as required by energy and climate policy.