Data themes: Energy and environment

Resources for researching energy and environment may include data from subscription databases, publicly available data portals or archived academic projects. Some suggestions are:

British Social Attitudes Survey (BSA)  
A survey that produces annual measures of attitudinal change. It complements information gathered from large-scale government surveys that deal largely with facts and behaviour patterns, and attitudes data produced by polls. The data reflects patterns of continuity and change in political and social attitudes including views on the environment, climate controls and transport.

Carbon Dioxide (CO2) Emissions from Fuel Combustion database  
A dataset collected by the International Energy Agency (IEA) which provides a comparative analysis of CO2 emissions from fossil fuel combustion. Data are included for 30 Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries and for more than 100 non-OECD countries and regions. In general, OECD data are available from 1960 and non-OECD data from 1971 onwards.

Climatic Research Unit (CRU)
Official webpage for a leading institution concerned with the study of natural and anthropogenic climate change. The Climatic Research Unit is based at the University of East Anglia (UEA) and has an online library of related data collections. Topics include Temperature, Precipitation, Drought Indices, UK Climate, Mediterranean Climate, Alpine Climate Data and dedicated subsets for Japan, Greenland and the Falklands.

Cross-national time-series data archive (CNTS)
The longitudinal national data series provides ranges of annual data from 1815 to the present for over 200 countries with 196 variables of use to the social scientist researcher. A comprehensive listing of international and national country data facts. General categories include demographic, social, political, and economic topics.

International Energy Agency (IEA)
A statistical resource providing access to monthly data on oil and gas stocks, consumption and supply, quarterly energy prices. Other offerings include an energy atlas, tabulations of key world energy statistics and various data visualisation tools. Most of the underlying data is also available from the UK Data Service.

Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR)
A major archive of social science research data that holds information predominately relating to the United States but also has some additional collections. Data is available on a range of topics including geography and the environment.

National Energy Efficiency Data-Framework  
A data framework compiled from data from difference sources by the Department of Energy and Climate Change.

Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD)
A major source for global monthly, quarterly and annual data and statistics on trade and international development. Data to do with energy and the environment is also collected. Most of these surveys are made available through the UK Data Service but further analysis and commentary is provided by the OECD iLibrary such as statistics on greenhouse gas emissions, air emissions by industry, forest resources, green growth indicators and environmental expenditure.

Office for National Statistics (ONS) for England and Wales: Environmental accounts
Official webpage of the UK government for census and other government surveys shows how the environment contributes to the economy (for example, through the extraction of raw materials), the impacts that the economy has on the environment (for example, energy consumption and air emissions), and how society responds to environmental issues (for example, through taxation and expenditure on environmental protection).

See also earlier releases moved to the National Archives.

UK Data Service  
An archive of social science research that, in collaboration with the UK Data Archive, makes data available from many key governmental surveys and academic research projects. Content may be downloaded or analysed online on various issues ranging from household energy use to global greenhouse gas emissions, the production of oil and gas and the consumption of electricity worldwide.

UN Statistics Division (UNSD) Environmental Indicators
A collection of global environment statistics on ten indicator themes compiled from a wide range of data sources. The themes and indicator tables were selected based on the current demands for international environmental statistics and the availability of internationally comparable data.

US Energy Information Administration (EIA)
Detailed US and international energy statistics on supply, prices, consumption, trade, environment, forecasts and analyses. Also contains statistics for many types of energy including alternative sources as well as historical statistics. Some statistics can be downloaded in Excel files.

You can find further resources on this theme by using on Databases A-Z or SOLO and subject guides.

Recommendations for additions to these lists are always welcome. Please email the Bodleian Data Librarian with suggestions.