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The European Union (EU) has committed to supporting the United Nations’ efforts in line
with the Paris Agreement for addressing climate change and has set ambitious targets to reduce
primary energy consumption and emissions. Similar commitments have also been set by EU-27
member states. For this purpose, it is necessary to use a primary energy factor (PEF) for converting
electricity use to primary energy units and for assessing energy conservation measures. Lower PEFs
reflect efficiency improvements in power generation, an increased share of renewable energy sources
in the fuel mix for electricity generation, and lower transmission and distribution losses. Over the
past decades, there have been intensive efforts and notable progress in the EU-27 for increasing
the use of renewables in the energy mix for electricity generation. However, the EU default PEF
value for electricity was not regularly updated and remained at 2.5 for several years till it was finally
recalculated at 2.1 in the 2018 recast of the Energy Efficiency Directive. This paper reviews different
calculation options for estimating the PEF for electricity from official annual statistics, presents the
historical evolution of the calculated conversion factors, and provides simple linear correlations for
projecting the PEF values that can be used to facilitate more-realistic forward-looking calculations
and assess national energy efficiency, climate change, or decarbonization plans in EU-27 member
states. A more detailed analysis and case studies on the impacts of this work are illustrated for Greece
and Poland.
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