The stakes are high, and the analysis driving discourse is often unfit for purpose.
The energy transition is the largest capital reallocation in modern history.
Trillions in investment. Hundreds of national policy calls. And a conversation dominated by confident opinions built on debatable evidence.
The big consultancies are too broad.
Big databases and bigger slide decks.
With analysis shaped by who owns it, instead of the question at hand.
Academic research is too slow.
Rigorous and methodologically ahead, but hedged, and published 18 months after you needed it.
Al isn't accountable.
Fluent, fast and confident, with nobody responsible for accuracy or relevance.
Wattage sits in the gap: rigorous, independent, and quick enough to matter.
We connect the dots between academic rigour and practical decision-making.
Quantitative work (energy data, econometric modelling, forecasting) is only worth as much as the decision it informs.
We do the analysis, then we do the harder part: making it clear, honest and usable.
Forecasting & modelling.
Carbon-price forecasting, demand modelling, scenario work, with academic methods brought into commercial decisions.
Interpretation.
Reading what the numbers say, what they don't, and where they're being misused. The translation informs decision-making.
Deep data work.
20 years inside the world's reference dataset for energy. We know where the numbers come from. Most firms only buy them.
Why Wattage?
Independent, and proud to prove it.
No parent company. No house view to protect. No preconceptions to obscure our objectivity. And we share our working, so you can interrogate it.
Every job gets a principal.
Senior economists do the hands-on work, every time. No supporting cast. No affiliates. No B-team.
We're small and senior by design.
Methods from active research.
Practising professors in econometrics and machine learning. Forecasting techniques that haven't reached the big firms yet, translated into work that resonates in the boardroom.
We know the data from the inside.
20 years running the world's reference dataset for energy. We know what's solid, what's open to interpretation, and what's being bent for effect.
4 economists. No juniors.
Wattage is comprised of the 4 people who do the work. Born as an offshoot of Heriot-Watt University, we've spent 20 years developing and translating the world's reference dataset for energy.
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Antonio Carvalho
Antonio Carvalho is an economist and energy statistician with an expertise in energy balances and a particular passion for power and coal markets. He has worked as an OECD official in different roles related to statistics and data science and worked as a consultant for international organisations.
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Erkal Ersoy
Erkal Ersoy is an Assistant Professor of Economics at Heriot-Watt University specialising in applied econometrics, energy economics, energy security, and energy statistics. He combines academic research with consulting for governments, international organisations, and industry, with expertise in global energy statistics.
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Julian Fennema
Julian Fennema is an Honorary Associate Professor and former Director of Teaching at the Institute of Petroleum Engineering, Heriot-Watt University. His expertise includes upstream oil and gas, FCA carbon modelling, energy policy, and energy markets.
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Mark Schaffer
Mark Schaffer is a Professor of Economics at Heriot-Watt University and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh and the Royal Society of Arts. He has worked as a consultant for organizations such as the World Bank, the IMF, EBRD, the United Nations, the European Commission, and the UK Government. Besides energy economics his expertise includes machine learning techniques in econometrics.
Work that speaks for itself.
Every year, Wattage produces the Statistical Review of World Energy: the reference dataset the sector has run on since 1952. It's the plainest evidence of what we do. Quantitative work rigorous enough that an industry trusts it.
Looking for the same level of rigour to point at your question?