decctools

decctools is an R package that provides easy access to energy statistics from the United Kingdom Department of Energy and Climate Change. It currently provides access to two major data sources:

• sub-national final energy consumption data at the local authority, middle super output area (MSOA), and lower super output area (LSOA) scales

• fuel mix data and the associated carbon intensity of grid electricity using Elexon balancing mechanism data

You must have Curl installed to use this package.

Sub-national statistics

Sub-national energy statistics are available at three different geographies: Local Authority Districts (LADs), Middle Super Output Areas (MSOAs), and Lower Super Output Areas (LSOAs). For each geography, the following functions are available where * corresponds to the correct level (LAD, MSOA, or LSOA).

• get_*_data(year, sector, fuel, id, dir) gets the energy demand data for the geography. See ?get_*_data for full detail on the options and note that not all geographies provide the same level of data. For example at the LSOA level, data are only available for domestic electricity and gas in England and Wales.

  Here's an example:

  ## Gets energy data for electricity and gas use in the domestic sector in the most recent year
  df <- get_LAD_data(sector="domestic", fuel=c("electricity", "gas"))
  

  You may encounter OutOfMemoryError (Java) when loading LSOA data. In this case, close R, open a new session, and type options(java.parameters = "-Xmx1000m") before loading decctools. This increases the maximum amount of memory allowed for Java so you may need to change the 1000 value to match the available memory on your machine.

• get_*_years gets a numeric vector of years for which data are available at the specified geography.

• get_*_metadata(dir) gets a table of metadata about the geography in question. If given, the dir option allows you to save a copy of the table to a local directory.

The package provides a lookup table to match LAD, MSOA, and LSOA id codes; this is accessible via get_geo_lookup. Owing to the frequent changes in UK geography in recent years, it is advisable to merge LAD data on the name field.

You can also check if a given LAD is urban or rural by using is_urban(LAD, urban) where urban is a set of codes defining which ONS urban classifications you would like to consider as urban.

Grid carbon intensity

Elexon's BM Reports provides data on the UK's electricity market including the amount of electricity generated by different fuel types in each half-hourly period of the day. Historic data (back to 2009-01-01) has been archived by the charity Renewable Energy Foundation and decctools uses their summaries to provide the data used here.

There are two methods of interest:

• get_grid_mix(start, end) gets the amount of electricity generated by different sources at half-hourly intervals between two specified Dates

• get_grid_carbon(start, end) gets the carbon intensity of grid electricity (kg CO2/kWh) between two specified Dates

An example:

get_grid_carbon('2013-05-01', '2013-05-31')