Glossary: S-W
Definitions of Intratec methodology and product terms from S to W.
S
- Score
- A 0–100 value summarizing a country's competitiveness in the Industry Economics & Competitiveness program, where 50 equals the global mean; called Normalized Score in the program's own report glossary.
- Secondary Energy Sources
- Usable forms of energy produced by processing primary energy sources, such as refined fuels and electricity.
- Site Infrastructure
- The OSBL facilities that support a process unit in Commodity Production Costs reports, such as storage, utility supply, auxiliary units, administrative buildings, and support buildings.
- Solar Energy
- The Sun's radiant energy, harnessed through photovoltaic cells to generate electricity or through solar thermal systems for heating and industrial applications.
- Solid Biofuels
- Biofuels in solid form, such as wood pellets and briquettes used as substitutes for coal in heating and power generation.
- Sovereign Credit Rating
- A sovereign credit assessment mapped to a numeric scale, used as a proxy for country risk premium.
- Specific Pillars Score
- The equal-weighted average of the 6 Industry-Specific pillar scores in an Industry Economics & Competitiveness assessment; the sector-specific counterpart to the Base Pillars Score.
- Spot Price
- A price for a single transaction under current market conditions with prompt delivery, as opposed to supply under longer-term contract terms.
- Stock Change
- The variation in a country's energy inventories over a period, measured as closing stock minus opening stock; a positive result is a stock build (supply added to storage), a negative result a stock draw (storage released to supply). A term of the Energy Prices & Markets energy balance.
- Sub-Index
- A pillar score calculated for a single industry family; an Industry-Specific pillar's overall score is the equal-weighted average of its industry-family sub-indices.
T
- T-Score
- The normalized scoring method used across all Industry Economics & Competitiveness pillars, centering a 0–100 scale so that 50 equals the global mean.
- Technology Maturity Assessment
- The Commodity Production Costs classification of a process technology's maturity, used to set assumptions such as process contingency, project contingency, startup inefficiency, R&D costs, and ROCE.
- Technology Readiness Level (TRL)
- A maturity framework adapted in Commodity Production Costs methodology to classify process technologies from early concept through established technology.
- Tier Band
- One of the three tiers of the Industry Economics & Competitiveness ranking: Upper (positions 1–11), Mid (12–22), and Lower (23–33).
- Total Employer Cost
- The sum of Direct Pay and Indirect Pay, representing the complete hourly labor cost borne by the employer.
- Total Fixed Capital (TFC)
- The sum of plant cost and owner's cost in Commodity Production Costs capital-investment structure.
- Total Operating Cost
- Operating cash cost plus depreciation in Commodity Production Costs reports, before corporate overhead and ROCE are added to calculate product value.
- Total Process Capital (TPC)
- The plant-cost subtotal in Commodity Production Costs reports before project contingency, combining ISBL investment, process contingency, and OSBL investment.
- Trade-Based Price
- A price derived from official international trade records reported by countries' customs authorities, calculated only after the underlying records are confirmed to be homogeneous — the same commodity, specification, and trade conditions; transaction prices and unit values are its two forms.
- Trade Openness
- The combined value of a country's exports and imports as a percentage of GDP, reflecting its outward economic orientation.
- Trade Partners
- The countries involved in a country's energy imports and exports; identified per commodity category in the Energy Prices & Markets program, revealing market dependencies and the concentration of supply relationships.
- Trade-Weighted Average Tariff (TWAT)
- The average tariff rate weighted by actual trade volumes, used in both the Import Protection and Export Market Access measures.
- Trailing Average
- A 12-month rolling mean applied to most Industry Economics & Competitiveness indicator series to smooth seasonality and short-term noise before normalization.
- Transaction Price
- A filtered trade-based price that removes low-volume records and gross outliers from official trade data so the resulting assessment better reflects a representative market level.
U
- Unit Value
- A trade-based figure calculated as total declared trade value divided by total traded quantity for a country and month; unlike a transaction price, a unit value receives no statistical filtering for low volume, outliers, or market specificity.
- Universe
- The set of 33 countries benchmarked across all pillars of the Industry Economics & Competitiveness program.
- Utility Infrastructure
- A component of the Logistics & Infrastructure pillar in the Industry Economics & Competitiveness program, measuring the coverage and scale of a country's foundational electricity, water, and gas grids as a proxy for industrial baseload readiness.
W
- Wind Energy
- Electricity generated by converting wind's kinetic energy through turbines, with blades capturing wind currents to drive generators.
- Working Capital
- Funds needed, in addition to fixed capital, to bring a plant into operation and meet ongoing obligations; in Commodity Production Costs reports it includes items such as receivables, payables, inventories, supplies and stores, and cash on hand.