U.S. Energy Trade Dashboard
The U.S. Energy Trade Dashboard is a data visualization tool that provides enhanced user experience to U.S. exporters and energy industry stakeholders. This tool was developed by the International Trade Administration (ITA) Office of Energy & Environmental Industries and is intended to help businesses, researchers, and policymakers obtain insights on annual U.S. country-level trade data in various energy sectors and sub-sectors.
Based on input from industry and changes made at the World Customs Organization in 2022 to the Harmonized System, the Dashboard has been expanded to include greater product coverage and more granularity in sector and sub-sector groupings. Sector and sub-sector groupings have been made based on analysis of 377 unique 10-digit Schedule B export classifications and 584 unique 10-digit Harmonized Tariff Schedule (HTS) import classifications within the energy sector. They are intended to provide stakeholders with more targeted industry definitions than those that are based upon higher 6-digit Schedule B or HTS aggregations. The Office of Energy & Environmental Industries makes every effort to continuously assess and validate this list of Schedule B and HTS classifications, which are drawn from the more than 19,000 individual product classifications in the broader Harmonized System. Users should be aware of the limitations of these sector groupings, which may lead to underreporting or overreporting based upon included or excluded codes.
Click below for a complete list of export (Schedule B) and import (HTS) codes, sector concordances, and geographic concordances.
Click below for a copy of the User Guide.
Questions or comments?
Email EnergyTradeDashboard@trade.gov.
Users should also be aware of the limitations of this tool based upon the same issues inherent in country-level merchandise trade reporting. For more information on U.S. foreign trade data, visit Census Foreign Trade.
Battery Supply Chain
The dashboard tracks trade in products across the battery supply chain, which comprises part of the Energy Storage industry. The battery supply chain includes raw materials production, materials processing, and finished goods. This provides more detail than other sectors included in the dashboard, which largely capture trade in finished goods.
Battery supply chains have been a focus for the U.S. Government as the demand for high-capacity batteries has grown, as demonstrated by the 100-day supply chain review published in June 2021. Due to growing demand for advanced batteries, the Departments of Energy, Commerce, State, and Defense launched the Federal Consortium for Advanced Batteries (FCAB), which brings together Federal agencies focused on the U.S. battery industry. FCAB published the National Blueprint for Lithium Batteries to guide investments in a domestic lithium-battery manufacturing value chain. The trade codes listed in this sector were derived in large part from research conducted by technical staff within the FCAB member agencies. Certain products listed as inputs in the Battery Supply Chain sector are used extensively outside of battery applications, however they are included to provide a holistic view of the overall inputs. The battery supply chain dashboard can serve as an additional data point in U.S. Government efforts to understand trade across the lithium-ion battery supply chain.
Civil Nuclear
Nuclear energy typically refers to the process of harnessing induced fission in uranium atoms to generate energy and heat from which steam can be derived to drive a turbine and generate electricity. This process does not produce any greenhouse gases - avoiding a drawback of current fossil fuel-based generation technology. Nuclear energy is viewed as an abundant and long-term source, as known uranium deposits can sustain current nuclear power use for another 200 years according to the Nuclear Energy Agency (NEA).
The U.S. Civil Nuclear Sector includes multiple Sub-Sectors: Advisory and Legal Support Services; Design, Construction, and Operation; Components; Fuels; and Back-End Services. For the purposes of the U.S. Energy Trade Dashboard, only data on Fuels and Components sub-sectors are available to view. This is because tracking trade in services can be inherently more difficult than tracking goods. As a result, the data within the U.S. Energy Trade Dashboard is not truly reflective of the entire scope of U.S. Civil Nuclear exports or imports.
Electricity is a form of energy that has been converted from a primary form of energy via power generation (for example, a wind turbine, solar panel, nuclear reactor, coal or gas power plant, etc.) that is then transmitted across the electrical grid to customers.
The United States shares electricity interconnections with Canada that result in billions of dollars in cross-border electrical energy trade each year. The United States also shares electricity interconnections with Mexico, however the grid systems are asynchronous, meaning that the transmission systems on either side can operate independently. Because the amount of cross border electrical energy trade between the United States and Mexico is so small, the Census Bureau does not collect and publish electrical energy trade data between the two countries.
Electricity Infrastructure consists of electrical equipment and devices that facilitate the transmission and distribution of electrical energy from the power plant or generator to the final consumers. This includes equipment such as arresters, capacitors, switchgear and circuit breakers, conductor, connecter, meters, controls, and transformers of different sizes and capacities. Based on input from industry, the Dashboard now tracks trade in wooden line poles as well as insulators, copper wire, and other products.
As a result of exciting Smart Grid technologies and applications that are increasingly digitalizing the grid, the Electricity Infrastructure sector is undergoing many profound changes. Smart Grid technologies like advanced metering infrastructure (AMI), advanced distribution management systems (ADMS), distributed energy resources management software (DERMS), virtual power plants (VPP), vehicle-to-grid integration, artificial intelligence (AI) and other software/cloud-based services are profoundly impacting the commercial landscape for these products. Due to the inherent challenge of tracking service exports like the ones listed above, or other services like advisory and legal services or engineering, procurement, and construction services, the U.S. Energy Trade Dashboard is not reflective of the entire scope of U.S. electricity infrastructure exports or imports. Also, due to the vast range of power ratings for electrical products, the dashboard is limited to grid-scale products and does not include residential equipment or consumer electronics.
Fossil Energy
The United States is the world’s top producer of petroleum and natural gas. U.S. companies offer advanced and cost-competitive techniques for extracting hydrocarbons from shale and offshore oil and gas deposits. U.S. companies also deploy digitalization and automation solutions to lower emissions throughout the oil and gas value chain and play a key role in global decarbonization efforts.
For the purposes of the U.S. Energy Trade Dashboard, the Fossil Energy sector is divided into three headings: Coal and Coal Products, Oil and Gas Products, and Equipment. Within these headings are numerous sub-sectors. While the data provided in the dashboard represents a significant amount of products within the fossil energy value chain, it does not include exports or imports of associated services like accounting, legal, engineering, procurement and construction, software and IT. The dashboard also provides limited coverage of the full midstream and downstream oil and gas segments. This is largely because products found within these segments can have multiple end-uses that are unrelated to the fossil energy sector. For example, the dashboard does not include products like electric motors, actuators, process controls, etc. that are found in oil and gas refining but which are also used extensively in non-oil and gas industries. As a result, the U.S. Energy Trade Dashboard may not be reflective of all exports or imports across the oil and gas value chain.
Renewable Energy
Traded goods in the Renewable Energy sector consist of primary energy in the form of biomass products (e.g. wood pellets, ethanol, biodiesel) as well as equipment used to generate electricity from sources such as wind, solar photovoltaics, and hydropower. Based on changes made by the World Customs Organization in 2022, new distinctions have been made to break out solar generators.
Products tracked under the renewable energy section of this dashboard include those whose 10-digit HTS and/or Schedule B codes designate primary or exclusive applicability to renewable energy. Due to a lack of renewable energy-specific services trade data, as well as the applicability of certain equipment and components in other sectors, the data presented in this dashboard are not reflective of the entire scope of U.S. renewable energy exports or imports. Trade in certain products that may be used in renewable energy applications is tracked in this dashboard under other energy sectors. For example, steam turbines used in geothermal, biomass, and concentrating solar power plants is tracked under the thermal power sector.
Thermal Power
Traded goods in the thermal power sector consist of equipment used to generate electricity from heat energy, such as gas turbines, steam turbines, generators, boilers, condensers, internal combustion engine driven generating sets, and parts and components thereof. Applications of thermal power equipment tracked in this section include natural gas, coal, nuclear, geothermal, biomass, and concentrating solar power plants.
Due to a lack of thermal power-specific services data, as well as the fact that thermal power plants contain equipment and components that are also used in other applications, the data presented in this dashboard are not reflective of the entire scope of U.S. thermal power exports or imports.
FAQs
Why is my product not listed? Have a question or comment?
A: Email EnergyTradeDashboard@trade.gov.
Why doesn’t the dashboard delineate between Clean Tech and non-Clean Tech products?
Harmonized Tariff Schedule (HTS) and Schedule B product codes do not always provide a clear indication of whether the product will be used in a clean tech or zero-emissions application. Goods classified under many specific product codes can be used in both Clean Tech and non-Clean Tech applications. For example, many products used in power generation sectors with zero carbon emissions (e.g. geothermal, civil nuclear) are also found in high-emitting sectors (e.g. coal-fired power generation).
Why does the dashboard contain more import (HTS) codes than export (Schedule B) codes?
There are approximately 19,000 HTS codes, compared to about 9,000 Schedule B codes. The additional detail for HTS classifications means multiple HTS numbers can correlate to a single Schedule B number. For more information, see this article by the U.S. Census Bureau.
Why does the dashboard only use U.S. data?
The dashboard exclusively uses data that is gathered and reported by the U.S. government on the flow of goods through U.S. borders. This allows users to understand trade in energy and environmental goods between the United States and individual foreign countries with a high degree of product granularity using 10-digit Harmonized Tariff Schedule (HTS) and Schedule B codes. Because these product codes are internationally harmonized at the 6-digit level, users can access trade data reported by foreign governments at higher levels of product aggregation by using the United Nations Comtrade Database.
Can I use this dashboard to find U.S. market share of specific products in countries?
This dashboard does not provide data on the overall size of demand for energy goods in a foreign country, including both goods produced domestically and imported from third countries. Therefore, the U.S. export data provided by this dashboard are not sufficient to estimate U.S. market share on their own.
Are there other limitations I should be aware of?
Information on country-level trade of goods across national borders has long been available as a byproduct of customs documents. As a result, this dashboard makes no distinction between firm-to-firm trade (e.g. goods exported by a firm from one country and purchased by an unrelated firm in another country), and intra-firm trade (e.g. goods traded between associated entities within the same multi-national firm but across two countries).