Austria's energy intensity can be analysed at different levels of final energy consumption. The following chart relates gross domestic consumption and final energy input to real GDP (prices of the year 2000).

Both gross domestic consumption and final energy consumption have considerable grown since the year 1990. Energy intensities, however, in the period between 1991 and 2006 rather show stagnation.

Service industries

the service industries are the sector with the strongest increase of energy intensity.  Energy intensity of this sector has been constantly growing, no matter if expressed as ratio “energy input per person employed” or as energy input per GDP.

Manufacturing industries

Possible reference parameters for the calculation of energy intensity of the manufacturing industries  are gross value added, production value (gross value added plus intermediate inputs) and the production index – a measurement for changes of physical outputs. As far as possible, energy intensity is being displayed for all three reference parameters.

For the producing sector as a whole, the production index is not available. The divergent course of the curves underlines the importance of the reference parameter for the calculation of energy intensity. So, the course of energy intensity referred to gross value added shows slight increase since the year 1990, whilst energy intensity related to the production value has decreased for as much as 53% between 1990 and 2006. The reason for this divergence is the higher growth  of the parameter production value in comparison to the growth of gross value added. This might be caused by several reasons:

Higher input prices without corresponding growth of output product prices.

Trend towards more out-sourcing: Whenever an enterprise will source out single production  processes to other companies, this will not lead to a change of the parameter production value, whilst gross value added will decrease.

Transportation

Among all kinds of final energy consumption, the quantity of energy consumed in the transportation sector is the one most rapidly growing. In the year 2005, 8,35 millions of tons of fuel have been consumed in this sector, 6,28 millions of which were diesel fuels. Furthermore, 2,07 millions of tons of gasoline and 96.000 t of bio-fuels were consumed.

The reason for the constant growth of transport fuel consumption is the continuous increase of mileage driven on Austria's roads.

Specific consumption per car-kilometres is decreasing

Both overall energy efficiency of the transport sector (expressed in energy used per car-kilometre driven) and energy efficiency of the nation's private passenger car-fleet (expressed as litres per 100 km) have significantly improved between 1990 and 2006 – the first value decreased 12%; the latter 20%. Specific energy end-use per car-kilometre is expected to further decrease during the next years.

Transport energy intensity has decreased also in relation to tons moved. In freight and passenger transportation, both the value for overall ton-kilometres and the one for overall passenger-kilometres have decreased since 1990. The reduction in freight transport amounted to 25% and thus clearly surmounted the reduction in passenger-kilometres (-4%).

Although due to further autonomous technological progress, the reduction of energy intensity in road traffic can be expected to continue, one may presume that without political measures the overall energy consumption of the transport sector will keep on rising as a consequence of increased road traffic.

Households

In the household sector, the increase of energy end-use for room heating and air conditioning between 1990 and 2006 made up 8,1%; yet taking into account differences in temperature, the increase was only 5,5%. The main reason for this increase is the growing number of households  (+21%) and the growing size of residential units (+16,5%).

The indicator “heating intensity of households” describes the ratio between energy end-use for room-heating purposes and net floor space of permanent residential units. This ratio according to data from Statistik Austria has been significantly decreasing - between 1990 and 2006 this decrease amounted to -25,1%. This fact can be interpreted as an annual increase of energy efficiency of 1,8% in the average of the whole period.

The category „other energy end-use of households“ (end-use not containing heating and traction), however, has been considerably growing – its increase between 1990 and 2006 amounted to 33%, which means that energy intensity in this sector has increased for 23%. In this sector of energy consumption, energy efficiency has clearly deteriorated.