GC: n

CT: An energy balance usually refers to a year, and can be made for consecutive years to show time variations.
Energy balances can be aggregate, or very detailed, depending on their functions. They can also be elaborate, showing all sorts of structural relationships between energy production and consumption, and specifying various intermediate forms of energy.
An energy balance can also be set up for a village, a household, a farm or an agricultural unit. It will show the inputs of energy in various forms, the end-use energy and the losses. Specific for energy balances of agricultural systems is the fact that parts of the outputs of the system are, at the same time, energy inputs into the system (agricultural residues, dung).
Energy balances have to be built up from surveys of what is actually going on. This requires energy resource surveys and energy consumption surveys, as well as more technical energy audits. Section 12 goes into some aspects of energy auditing.
Energy balances provide overviews, which serve as tools for analysing current and projected energy positions. The overviews can be useful for purposes of resource management, or for indicating options in energy saving, or for policies of energy redistribution, etc. However, care must be taken not to single out energy from other economic goods. That means that an energy balance should not be taken as our ultimate guide for action. Energy data are to be translated into economic terms, for a further analysis of options for action. And, of course, socio-cultural and environmental aspects are equally important.

S: FAO – http://goo.gl/36n4bV (last access: 18 November 2014).

N: 1. – energy (n): 1590s, ‘force of expression’, from Middle French énergie (16c.), from Late Latin energia, from Greek energeia ‘activity, action, operation’, from energos ‘active, working’, from en ‘at’ + ergon ‘work’, that which is wrought; business; action’. Used by Aristotle with a sense of ‘actuality, reality, existence’ (opposed to ‘potential’) but this was misunderstood in Late Latin and afterward as ‘force of expression’, as the power which calls up realistic mental pictures. Broader meaning of ‘power’ in English is first recorded 1660s. Scientific use is from 1807. Energy crisis first attested 1970.
– balance (n): early 13c., ‘apparatus for weighing’, from Old French balance (12c.) ‘balance, scales for weighing’, also in the figurative sense; from Medieval Latin bilancia, from Late Latin bilanx, from Latin (libra) bilanx “(scale) having two pans’, possibly from Latin bis ‘twice’ + lanx ‘dish, plate, scale of a balance.’ The accounting sense is from 1580s; the meaning ‘general harmony between parts’ is from 1732; sense of ‘physical equipoise’ is from 1660s. Balance of power in the geopolitical sense is from 1701. Many figurative uses (such as hang in the balance, late 14c.), are from Middle English image of the scales in the hands of personified Justice, Fortune, Fate, etc.
2. The balance, established for an area for a specific period of time, of inputs and outputs, and presented in the same way as an accounting balance.
3. An energy balance of a region (or country) is a set of relationships accounting for all energy which is produced, transformed and consumed in a certain period.
4. An energy balance usually refers to a year, and can be made for consecutive years to show time variations.
5. Energy balances can be aggregate, or very detailed, depending on their functions. They can also be elaborate, showing all sorts of structural relationships between energy production and consumption, and specifying various intermediate forms of energy.
6. An energy balance can also be set up for a village, a household, a farm, or an agricultural unit. It will show the inputs of energy in various forms, the end-use energy, and the losses. Specific for energy balances of agricultural systems is the fact that parts of the outputs of the system are, at the same time, energy inputs into the system (agricultural residues, dung).

S: 1. OED – http://goo.gl/ZYA5Wj (last access: 18 November 2014). 2. TACIS (582) p. 175. 3 to 6. FAO – http://goo.gl/36n4bV (last access: 18 November 2014).

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CR: energy