IEA to make data freely available

Fatih Birol, having secured a third term as the International Energy Agency (IEA)'s head, has vowed to make the Paris-based agency's data freely available to the public.

The public in the IEA's 31 member countries already fund the agency's research indirectly through taxation. But much of the agency's research nevertheless falls under a paywall. For example, for a single user to get energy price data covering 135 countries, they would have to pay a subscription fee of €1,450 ($1,595) annually. A global corporate licence to assess all the agency's data costs €100,000/year.

"We ... would like to start making IEA data freely available in the interest of increasing data transparency and supporting good-decision making," Birol said in a speech on March 23, after energy and climate ministers from its member countries met in Paris for an annual meeting.

"The IEA paywall makes citizens pay twice - once for collection of data by national government agencies and then a second time to access the resulting data," John Kemp, senior market analyst at Reuters, commented on social media. "The IEA's current data-sales model is unique among international agencies and government statistical services, which make taxpayer-funded data freely available."

Kemp said the policy was "entirely unjustified," as the IEA's subscriptions actually raise less than €7mn annually, "which is a rounding error in government finance."

"The IEA's revenues from data sales are trivial, so the resistance from member governments to changing the sales policy can only be motivated by ideological reasons."

Making the data free to access is part of the IEA's governing board's IEA 3.0 plan, which will focus both on energy security and climate action. IEA 3.0's key other themes will be developing the necessary minerals to support the energy transition, reducing CO₂ and methane emissions and expanding the IEA community. Argentina, Egypt and Lithuania are all joining the organisation this year as its newest members.