Frequently Asked Questions

Most items in the library are available for loan to EI members, either by borrowing the books in person or as a postal loan. 

To arrange a postal loan just e-mail lis@energyinst.org giving your name, your EI membership number and the book number of each item you wish to borrow. (You will find the number on the catalogue record).

You may borrow up to four items at a time for up to four weeks. You may renew an item up to three times if no-one else wants to borrow it.

We ask that you refund the cost of postage. We will send items by First Class post unless otherwise instructed. Loans are free if you collect the items.

Please note - We only lend to non-members via the BLDSC Interlibrary loan scheme.

Knovel

We subscribe to the Knovel service for our individual members - providing free online electronic access to the full text of over 110 reference books on energy related subjects. Knovel is used by applied scientists and practicing engineers around the world to quickly locate relevant and reliable technical information.

EBSCO Environment Complete

Individual members of the Energy Institute now have access to the full text of over 750 energy related periodical titles on the EBSCO Environment Complete service.

The Library is on the first floor of the Energy Institute, 61 New Cavendish Street, London, W1G 7AR 

Access
We have no access for wheel chair users and limited access for other disabled people.

Tube
The Energy Institute is located within 10 minutes walk of five tube stations - Regent's Park, Great Portland Street, Warren Street, Goodge Street and Oxford Street. Please Click here to go to the Tube website.

Rail
Direct connections to mainline stations Paddington, Charing Cross, King's Cross/St Pancras, Liverpool Street, Victoria and Euston are simple via the underground system. Click here to go to the Network Rail website.

Black cabs
Black cabs are normally freely available in central London. A taxi ride from Euston or King's Cross/St Pancras will take approximately 15 minutes, depending on the time of day. Journeys from other stations will take longer. Click here to go to the Transport for London website.

Car parks
The nearest NCP car parks are located within a 10-minute walk from the Energy Institute. They are at Carburton Street and Portland Place. There is also a large underground private car park in Cavendish Square. Click here to go to the NCP website.

UK legislation

The Department of Energy & Climate Change has a policy and legislation web section. This provides links to energy related legislation including the Energy Act 2008 and the Climate Change Act 2008. UK legislation on all subjects is available on the Legislation.gov.uk website.

EU legislation

All European Union law can be found on the EUR-Lex website. The site has grouped together law aimed at reducing greenhouse gas emissions and law related to energy statistics. 

The Europe’s Energy Portal website has lots of useful information, including European energy statistics, 2020 renewable energy targets for each EU member state, a similar CO₂ emissions targets section and lists of key EU publications and directives related to energy.

International legislation

There are also international energy related agreements such as the Kyotol Protocol, which sets targets for 37 industrialized countries and the European community for reducing greenhouse gas emissions. These amount to an average of five per cent against 1990 levels over the five-year period 2008-2012.

The International Energy Agency’s website has a section on Technology Agreements. To encourage internationally collaborative efforts to meet energy challenges, the IEA created a legal contract – an Implementing Agreement – and a system of standard rules and regulations.

There are a wide range of energy statistics available from a variety of sources. Some of these are freely available online, while others require a subscription (the EI Library subscribes to some of these, including International Energy Agency statistics).

The EI Data Service (for subscribers and EI members only)  contains addresses, statistics and useful information about the energy industries, including oil, gas, petrol prices, coal, nuclear and renewables. Non-EI members can subscribe and receive online access or monthly e-mailed updates - see subscription information on our Databases page. 

UK statistics

The Department of Energy & Climate Change (DECC) provide free UK energy statistics on their website, including oil, gas, coal, renewables, electricity, combined heat and power, foreign trade and weekly fuel prices stats. The EI Library has hard copy reference copies available of DECC statistics publications such as the Digest of United Kingdom energy statistics and Energy trends.

DECC also have a dedicated Oil & Gas website which provides detailed information on topics such as infrastructure, decommissioning, operatorship and field production.

Other UK organisations providing specialised energy statistics include: UK National Statistics, RenewableUK,  Association of Electricity Producers, UK Petroleum Industry (ukpia) and the RESTATS Renewable Energy Statistics database.

EU statistics

The European Commission Eurostat website has a wide range of European statistics, including energy, transport, trade and environment stats. The Europe’s Energy Portal website also has a useful variety of renewable and non-renewable European energy statistics, as well as CO2 emissions and fuel pricing data. 

The European Environment Agency provides a regularly updated European Emissions Trading Scheme data viewer, as well as a large number of maps and graphs on various energy topics.  

International statistics

The US Energy Information Administration provides free data on production, consumption, imports and exports not just for the US but most other countries worldwide. Their Country Energy Profiles section is especially useful for finding information on a particular country. 

The International Energy Agency (IEA) also collates international energy statistics & balances. Some of their short survey reports are free, while larger in-depth publications can be purchased from their website. The EI Library purchases a number of the annual IEA publications - for example, Oil Information, Coal Information, Natural Gas Information, Energy Statistics of OECD and non-OECD countries, Energy Prices & Taxes.

Ask us for help

This is a very quick overview of energy statistics sources. If you are unable to find what you are looking for please contact our Library and Information Service team. We can point you in the right direction or photocopy and post/email photocopies of statistics we subscribe to for a small charge. 

Our EI Data Service 12 statistics datasheet provides the average monthly UK retail petrol price, duty and tax figures for petrol, diesel and LPG (pence per litre), from 2003-current. This is free for EI members; non-members can purchase the pdf for £10 as a one-off purchase from our Publications website.

EI Data Service 12 is also available as a monthly e-mail update service by annual subscription. The service is priced annually at £23.00 inc VAT for EI members or £30.00 inc VAT for non-members. Please see www.energyinst.org/data-service for more information and an application form.

The Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC) publishes weekly, monthly and quarterly energy prices, including average retail prices of petroleum products, while the website Europe's Energy Portal publishes a chart comparing fuel prices in the 27 EU member states. 

For more detailed commercial information, Experian Catalist can provide daily site retail fuel prices for main fuels on sites across the UK, the Netherlands and Spain.

UK energy industry

The government collects basic figures on the number of people employed in the energy industry in the UK. These figures are published in The Department of Energy and Climate Change’s annual UK Energy in Brief publication. UK Energy in Brief 2011 gives a figure of 173,000 people directly employed in the UK energy industry in 2010 (7% of industrial employment), while more indirectly an estimated 207,000 worked in support of UK continental shelf production.

See DECC's UK Energy Sector Indicators 2011 for information on UK energy industry employment trends and contribution to our overall economy. The energy industries contributed about 3.4% to GDP in 2010, of which 1.8% was oil and gas industry related. Ernst & Young have estimated the combined direct & indirect benefits of the power and gas sector to the UK economy in terms of gross value added (GVA) in 2010 as being £92 billion, around 8% of the UK total (Ernst & Young, The role of the power and gas sector in the wider economy).

The government does not collect separate data on employment in the renewable energy industry, but the Renewable Energy Agency estimated in its 'Renewable Energy: Made in Britain' 2012 report that there were almost 100,000 full-time equivalent renewables jobs in the UK in 2010/11, rising to at least 110,000 by 2012. These figures include jobs not just in firms exclusively involved in renewable energy but also in firms partly involved or for which servicing the renewables supply chain forms over 20% of their business. 

Cogent, the Sector Skills Council (SSC) for the Chemicals, Pharmaceuticals, Nuclear, Oil and Gas, Petroleum and Polymer Industries, publish freely available detailed industry factsheets on several energy industry areas on their website. The factsheets include annual turnover, number of companies & employees, occupational distrubution and skill levels for each area. 

The Energy Institute carries out regular employment surveys amongst members. The most recent 2012 salary survey, carried out in conjunction with Hays Energy, is available on the EI website at energyinst.org/education/job-search-recruitment/salary-survey-2012. Salaries and benefits in the energy sector remain competitive and job satisfaction is also high among the workforce.

European energy industry

The European Commission's Eurostat Statistics website is a key source for European employment figures. The Eurostat publication Key Figures on European Business (2010) gives some figures for EU27 employment by industry on p34, Table 2.1. Coke, petroleum & nuclear fuel had a combined Euro billion turnover of 488.8 in 2007 and 165,000 employees, while electricity, gas & steam had a combined Euro billion turnover of 939.9 and 1,219,000 employees.

Eurostat has set up a network of support centres which provide help and guidance to Internet users of European statistical data. Contact details for this support network can be found on their website at: http://epp.eurostat.ec.europa.eu/portal/page/portal/help/user_support.

US Energy Industry

The US Department of Labor collects Occupational Employment Statistics. Their annual Occupational Employment Statistics survey gives US oil and gas extraction worker figures, for example the number of roustabouts, petroleum engineers, clerks etc employed.

The US Society of Petroleum Engineers conducts an annual Salary Survey amongst their members which includes information on pay rates by job category, gender and experience, average age, years of experience and percentage with education beyond bachelors degree. The highlights of this are publicly available from their website.