Moldovan national statistics bureau to have new information system for collecting, processing energy statistics data

Chisinau, 8 April /MOLDPRES/ - The National Statistics Bureau (BNS) will collect and analyze energy statistics data, on the basis of a new information system, developed within the Energy and Biomass Project, financed by the European Union and implemented by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP). 

Moldova has switched to European Union’s standards in energy statistics in 2014, when the first energy balance was published, worked out according to the minimal rules of the Energy Community, a member of which the country is. Yet, the collection and analysis of data was made under an old system. The new software, elaborated in line with the European standards, will allow collecting, beginning with 2016, of data on the potential of agricultural and wood biomass from Moldova, as well as the real volume of production and consumption of energy from biomass.    

The new system also implies collection of new data, absent in the energy balance so far, as well as the volume of agricultural and wood waste, forestry waste, consumed as energy resources, preponderantly in the real sector, says a press release of the Energy and Biomass Project Office. 

“So far, the National Statistics Bureau has used an obsolete application, developed in 1990s, which did not allow changing the statistics questionnaires. The new operational programme allows us modifying the questionnaire addressed to enterprises and completing it with additional questions regarding the potential (production) of biomass, as well as the consumption of biomass among the reporting enterprises,” a BNS representative, Svetlana Bulgac, said.      

At the same time, a questionnaire for households was elaborated, from which statistics data about the potential of biomass and real consumption of energy from biomass will be collected for the first time being.  Both questionnaires are developed in conformity with the UN’s Standards International Energy Product Classification. “The research on energy consumption by households will be one-off and will comprise data on the 2015 year, with estimations based on other investigations due to be made for the subsequent years,” Bulgac noted.   

“The actions, carried out by the competent institutions and authorities, through an exercise of quantification and reflection in official statistics of the biomass widely used in Moldova, allowed tripling the indicator and getting a value of renewable energy of 13.2 per cent in the national energy mixture – a figure valid for 2014. The institutions in charge are to mobilize and direct the resources to achieve the national target of 17 per cent by 2020,” the director of the Energy Efficiency Agency, Mihai Stratan, said.

The Energy and Biomass Project, the second phase, is a three-year project, implemented in 2025-2017. The project has an overall budget of 9.41 million euros, provided by the European Union and is carried out by the United Nations Development Programme.   

(Reporter V. Bercu, editor L. Alcaza)