Scientists winning the fight to free up global energy data

THE global energy authority looks likely to share its data with the world after a campaign by scientists to make it open-access.

Since its inception in the year after the 1973 oil crisis, the International Energy Agency (IEA) has kept the bestquality data on worldwide energy use. But the top annual package to access the data costs €100,000 (£83,343).

Two British scientists have criticised the rules. Dr Max Roser and Dr Hannah Ritchie, of the Our World in Data project, housed by the University of Oxford, argued in a blogpost that the global benefits of sharing data outweigh the approximate €5.6 million (£4.7 million) the IEA made from selling it in 2018.

On Wednesday, Fatih Birol, director of the IEA, told representatives of its 31 member countries – including Britain – that he would like to start making the data freely available. Ministers requested a review of ways of achieving this without damaging IEA finances.

Dr Ritchie and Dr Roser wrote: “To understand energy dependency and security we need to know which countries buy fuels from Russia and how much; which other countries have fuel reserves and could supply them instead; whether alternative sources of energy could be used.”