Underlying source: OT_022 · Related: CR_004, edt_framework
Purpose
This page is the bridging artefact between the IEA’s official 9-group energy technology classification (OT_022) and Neobiome’s 10 EDT domains (edt_framework). It exists so that:
- The NI calculation skill can reference IEA codes as its controlled vocabulary at the granularity calculation parameterisation actually happens (e.g. C124 for PV systems, F511 for community BESS, F23 for microgrids).
- Future entity-page additions can use these codes to disambiguate at boundary cases (e.g. is biogas under D01 Energy or D03 Waste? Answer: C432 in IEA = bioenergy production = D01 path; the waste-handling that feeds it = D03 path).
- Misalignments are documented so NI knows when an IEA code can be used as-is, when it must be used with a precision-loss caveat, and when NI must construct its own term entirely.
IEA → EDT crosswalk
| IEA code | IEA name | Primary EDT | Secondary EDT | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| A21–A23 | Building design, operations, appliances | D04 | D09 (A221 smart meters, A232 ICT) | A2231 (heat pumps) is leaf-level vocabulary for habitat calculations |
| A24 | Urban and spatial energy planning | D04 | D07 | Sits at the EDT habitat/governance boundary |
| A31 | Road transport | D05 | D01 (A3111 batteries cross to F511 logic) | EV charging (A314) is the community-scale integration point |
| A32–A35 | Rail, aviation, shipping, off-road | D05 | — | Mostly out of community-scale Neobiome scope |
| A4 | Agriculture and forestry | D02 | D08 | IEA has NO sub-codes here — EDT D02 must construct its own |
| A5 | Construction and civil engineering | D04 | D10 | IEA flat; EDT D04 splits into design/build/operation |
| C1 | Solar energy (all sub-codes) | D01 | D04 (C123 BIPV → habitat) | C124 = full vocabulary for PV systems |
| C2 | Wind energy | D01 | — | C21 explicitly includes “rooftop and community scales” (as bullet, no sub-code) |
| C3 | Ocean energy | D01 | — | Out of Lower Moutere scope; relevant for coastal NZ communities only |
| C4 | Bioenergy | D01 | D02 (feedstock side), D03 (waste-derived) | C432 anaerobic fermentation crosses to D03 if from waste |
| C5 | Geothermal energy | D01 | D02 (C59 greenhouses/aquaculture/community usage) | Most NZ-relevant code: C59 “community usage” of hot water |
| C6 | Hydroelectricity | D01 | — | C62 (<10 MW) covers community micro-hydro |
| F1 | Heat and power generation | D01 | — | Technology-agnostic; F11 includes Stirling, ORC, CHP-not-elsewhere |
| F211, F212 | Cables, AC/DC conversion | D01 | D10 (manufacturing) | F212 inverters are the leaf code for grid-forming community inverters |
| F221 | Load management and integration | D01 | D09 (DERMS, VPP) | Community demand response sits here |
| F23 | Mini grids and microgrids | D01 | — | THE FORMAL IEA CODE FOR NI’S CORE DESIGN UNIT |
| F3 | District heating and cooling | D01 | D04 (network into buildings) | F31 district heat pumps |
| F4 | Waste energy recovery | D01 | D03 | Cross-domain at IEA level |
| F511 | Batteries (excl. transport) | D01 | — | Community BESS code; explicitly distinct from A3111 EV batteries |
| F512 | Mechanical storage | D01 | — | Pumped hydro, CAES, flywheels — pumped hydro NOT under C6 |
| F52 | Thermal energy storage | D01 | D04 (when integrated in buildings) | Hot water, PCM, molten salts |
| Z1 | Energy system analysis | shared | D07 | Includes “behavioural and other social science research into energy” |
| Z2 | Digital tools for energy systems | D09 | D01 (AI grid management), D07 (blockchain P2P markets) | Note: VPPs are F221, not Z2 |
EDT → IEA reverse lookup
| EDT domain | IEA codes feeding in |
|---|---|
| D01 Renewable Energy & Storage | C entire, F entire, A314 (EV charging), partial E (H2 storage in F5) |
| D02 Smart Food Systems | A4 (single category — IEA is thin here), C4 (energy crops), C59 (low-temp geothermal for greenhouses/aquaculture) |
| D03 Water, Waste, Circular | C432 (anaerobic digestion from waste), F4 (waste energy recovery). NO peer IEA category for water |
| D04 Sustainable Habitat & Building | A2 entire, A5, C123 (BIPV), F3 (district heat into buildings), F52 (thermal storage in buildings) |
| D05 Smart Mobility & Transport | A3 entire (road, rail, aviation, shipping, off-road) |
| D06 Smart Health & Wellbeing | — (NO IEA category at all) |
| D07 Digital Governance & Economies | Z1 (social science), Z2 partial (blockchain P2P, pay-as-you-go) |
| D08 Biotechnology & Nature-based | Limited — C49 (algae, energy crops research, land-use). IEA treats biotech only as bioenergy feedstock |
| D09 Digital Intelligence & Connectivity | A221 (smart meters), A232 (energy-efficient ICT), A6 (data centres), A212 (AI-aided building design), F22 (grid comms), Z2 (digital tools incl. AI) |
| D10 Advanced Manufacturing & Fabrication | Embedded across C (e.g. C121 solar cell manufacturing) and F (e.g. F511 battery manufacturing). NO IEA standalone group |
Misalignments with NI / community-SS framing
The IEA Energy Technology Classification is built for RD&D budget reporting by national governments. That framing baseline systematically buries, marginalises, or excludes things that matter at community-self-sufficiency scale. This section catalogues the misalignments NI must be aware of when using IEA codes as a controlled vocabulary.
1. Explicit “Out of scope” markers
The IEA classification carries six explicit “Out of scope” labels — none at high-level group level, all hidden inside specific Excludes lists. Several of these are categories EDT treats as substantive:
| Where (in IEA) | “Out of scope” item | EDT relevance |
|---|---|---|
| A21, A22, A223 (excludes) | Indoor air quality (when not energy-efficiency related) | D04 habitat — passive house ventilation, air quality in tight envelopes |
| A22 (excludes) | Water and waste-water management not related to energy efficiency | D03 entire — the largest single hole in IEA vs EDT |
| A31 (excludes) | Walking and cycling | D05 active mobility — central to community-scale low-carbon transport |
| A31 (excludes) | Pedal electric cycles | D05 — community e-bike fleets |
| A31 (excludes) | Technologies primarily targeting noise reduction, safety improvement, comfort | D04/D05 liveability and co-design |
2. Community-scale concepts buried as bullets without sub-codes
Several community-relevant concepts are mentioned inside IEA “Includes” lists as single bullets but get no dedicated code, so they cannot be cited at calculation-skill granularity:
- “Rooftop and community scales” — one of four bullets under C21 Onshore wind (alongside MW-scale, off-ground/high-altitude, low-wind-speed). No C21X sub-code distinguishes scale.
- “Community usage” of geothermal hot water/steam — one of four bullets under C59 Geothermal NEC (alongside resource assessment, low-temp <150°C, environmental risk). No code for it.
- Solar cooking, solar drying of agricultural products, solar swimming pool heating — bullets under C11 Solar heating and cooling. Community appropriate-tech use cases with no dedicated codes.
- Biomass stoves and burners — A2233 Bioenergy in building heating: one definition line, no sub-codes for stove type / efficiency class / household-scale dimensions.
3. Scale-threshold mismatches
IEA uses utility-scale conventions that don’t fit community pilots:
| IEA code | IEA threshold | Community-scale reality |
|---|---|---|
| C61 / C62 Hydro split | ≥10 MW / <10 MW | Most NZ community micro-hydro is <100 kW; pico-hydro <5 kW. IEA gives one bucket for all of this. |
| C124 Solar PV systems | Single code | Lumps utility-scale ground-mount (10+ MW) with residential rooftop (3–10 kW). NI sizing needs the split. |
| F511 Batteries | Single code | Lumps residential 5–15 kWh through grid-scale 100+ MWh. NI battery sizing needs sub-distinction. |
| C21 Onshore wind | Single code | ”Small-scale rooftop and community” lumped with MW-scale. NI needs separation. |
4. Granularity gaps — zero sub-codes for community-relevant domains
Where IEA has no sub-codes, NI/EDT must construct its own:
- A4 Agriculture and forestry — zero sub-codes. Three illustrative bullets total (equipment, fertiliser, research). EDT D02 (Smart Food Systems) is much more elaborated.
- A5 Construction and civil engineering — zero sub-codes. Owner-built, natural-building (cob, earth, hempcrete), and community-build approaches not addressed.
- A6 Data centres — zero sub-codes. Edge / community-scale data infrastructure not differentiated.
5. Cross-domain ambiguities — places NI must explicitly disambiguate
IEA splits some technologies across multiple codes; NI calculations spanning the boundary need explicit routing rules:
- Heat pumps split across 4 codes — A121 (industrial), A2231 (building, with source-type sub-codes for air/ground/water/hybrid), C59 (geothermal source), F31 (district). A community shared heat-pump system serving 20 houses straddles A2231, F31, and possibly C59 (if ground-source).
- Batteries split: A3111 (EV) vs F511 (stationary) — V2G arbitrage where one battery serves both is not addressed.
- Solar PV inverters split — C124 holds solar-PV-specific inverters; F212 (AC/DC conversion) holds grid-forming and smart inverters generally. A community PV system with grid-forming inverter sits in both.
- Manufacturing embedded inside each technology (e.g. C121 solar cell manufacturing, F511 battery manufacturing) — no peer “advanced manufacturing” domain. EDT D10 reconstructs this.
- Demand response: A221 (consumer-premise) vs F221 (grid-side load management) — community demand response that aggregates households operates on both sides of this split.
- Anaerobic digestion: C432 (gaseous bioenergy from fermentation) vs F4 (waste energy recovery) — biogas from food waste is C432 if energy is the focus, F4 if waste handling is the focus. NI needs a rule.
6. Categories absent altogether at any IEA level
No IEA code maps to any of these — NI/EDT must source primary evidence outside the IEA classification:
- Community ownership models (cooperatives, trusts, papakāinga governance)
- Community-finance instruments (CHFA-style aggregated debt, social bonds, community-share schemes)
- Participatory design / co-design processes
- Indigenous knowledge systems / Mātauranga Māori
- Cohousing-specific or intentional-community-specific concepts (common house, shared infrastructure ownership)
- Aerobic composting, vermiculture, humanure systems (only the energy slice C432 anaerobic is in scope)
- Active mobility (walking, cycling — explicitly out of scope per §1)
- Water systems (rainwater harvesting, greywater reuse, blackwater treatment for non-energy purposes — explicitly out of scope per §1)
- Health systems (telehealth, community health delivery, mental health infrastructure)
- Education / sustainability learning (Gaia Education EDE, place-based pedagogy)
7. Framing biases — IEA-default framings that don’t carry community-SS meaning
Even where IEA has a code, the definitional framing sometimes does not capture what NI needs:
- F23 Mini grids and microgrids is defined for “rural electrification, disaster recovery and remote or islanded energy generation” — explicitly a rural electrification / resilience framing, not an intentional-community self-sufficiency framing. NI uses F23 as the design unit but the definitional language doesn’t translate.
- C6 Hydroelectricity 10 MW split (OT_022) reflects utility-finance conventions, not community-deployment realities.
- “Manufacturing and recycling of [tech] equipment is included” is bundled inside each tech group without breakdown by scale (artisan/local fab vs industrial). For NI’s local-fabrication-as-resilience framing, this is information loss.
Empirical confirmation (RD_004 — IEA Clean Tech Guide 2025): The operational dataset that this classification organises contains 640 tracked technologies. The word “microgrid” appears in only one entry (“Direct current buildings system”, TRL 7); “community scale” appears in only one (“Virtual net metering - community scale solar”, TRL 9). F23 Mini grids and microgrids exists at the CLASSIFICATION level (OT_022) but NOT as a TRACKED TECHNOLOGY in the operational guide — confirming the §7 framing-bias finding. The IEA tracks components, not integration patterns. RD_004
How to use this section: When the NI calculation skill needs a vocabulary entry, check first whether an IEA code exists and is appropriately framed. If yes, use it. If the concept appears in §2 (buried bullet), use the parent code but document the precision loss. If it appears in §1, §3, §4, §6, or §7, construct an NI-internal code/term and document the gap here.
Implications for the NI calculation skill
- Use IEA leaf codes as the controlled vocabulary for technology choice — when an NI calculation accepts a “technology” parameter (PV vs CSP vs heat pump), reference the IEA code (C12 / C13 / A2231) rather than free-text. Eliminates ambiguity at the calculation interface.
- F23 (mini grids and microgrids) is the design unit — NI’s energy skill should output an F23 design specification, not a list of generation assets. This matches how IEA already classifies the community-scale problem.
- The 4-digit leaf codes are the calculation-parameter granularity — A2231 splits heat pumps by source (air/ground/water/hybrid); C124 covers all PV system sizes under one code; F511 covers all stationary battery chemistries. NI parameterisation should land at this level, with NI-internal scale sub-distinction where IEA is coarse (see §3 above).
- Use IEA cross-references (Ref. X) as validation — when NI calculations span boundaries (e.g. battery in EV vs battery in BESS), the IEA “Excludes Ref. X” cross-references encode the correct routing. NI’s internal “what kind of battery?” disambiguation should mirror these.
- EDT gaps over IEA must be explicitly grounded elsewhere — D03 (water), D06 (health), D07 (governance), D08 (biotech), and the absent categories in §6 above need primary sources independent of IEA. CR_004 already flags this; this concept page reinforces it.
- The authoritative IEA TRL scale (1-11) and the STEPS/APS/NZE scenario framework are now sourced — OT_117 (ETP-2024) defines the IEA’s 11-level TRL scale verbatim (TRL 1 basic principles → TRL 9 full commercial operation → TRL 10 commercial-but-needs-integration → TRL 11 predictable growth at scale; Annex C, pp.545-546) and the three scenarios (STEPS current-policy / APS announced-pledges / NZE normative 1.5 °C net-zero-2050; §2.1, pp.114-116). This is the methodology behind RD_004’s per-technology TRL readiness lookup and its NZErationale column — NI’s deploy/pilot thresholds (TRL ≥9 deploy; 7-8 pilot; <7 research) can now cite the IEA’s own level definitions rather than a paraphrase. ⚠ The full span is 1-11, not 1-9 (RD_004’s page says “1-9 scale”; TRL 10-11 cover the market-integration stage most relevant to community integration).
Open questions
- Mapping ambiguity at the C432 / F4 boundary — biogas from food waste is C432 (gaseous bioenergy from anaerobic fermentation) per IEA, but the upstream waste-handling is F4 (waste energy recovery). NI calculations need an explicit rule for which side claims the LCOE/yield.
- Mapping ambiguity at the F511 / A3111 boundary for vehicle-to-grid (V2G) — IEA classifies on-board EV batteries as A3111 (excludes BESS) but doesn’t address V2G arbitrage where the same battery serves both. NI may need a hybrid code.
- RESOLVED (RT_114 → OT_116): ETP-2023 retrieved and read verbatim — it contains no “technology families” grouping at all (“technology families”/“technology family” = 0 occurrences). ETP-2023 organises technologies by manufacturing archetype (mass-manufactured / large-scale site-tailored / bulk materials; pp.94-95) — a supply-chain analytical device, not a competing taxonomy. So there is nothing to reconcile: OT_022’s 9-group RD&D classification remains the sole formal IEA taxonomy for this crosswalk. The “five” CR_004 cites (clean electricity generation; end-use electrification; energy efficiency; low-carbon fuels; CCUS/CDR) is the IEA Net Zero by 2050 Roadmap five-pillar framing, mis-attributed to ETP-2023 — treat ETP-2023 as a manufacturing lens, not a taxonomy tier (see OT_116 Notes).
Connections
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Referenced by