Has the accuracy of energy demand projections in the OECD countries improved since the 1970s?

Since the 1970s almost all OECD countries have published projections or forecasts of future <p> energy consumption. By now, three decades later, the actual values of energy consumption are <p> available for the same number of countries and thus a considerable amount of empirical data is <p> available concerning formal hypothesis testing, e.g. whether there have been improvements in <p> the forecasting accuracy during this period. Using data for sixteen OECD countries the empirical <p> evidence weakly favors the hypothesis that these countries have made some advances in <p> forecasting accuracy concerning projections at the aggregate level of energy consumption and <p> to a lesser degree at sectoral levels. Also, in accordance with a priori expectations, the forecasting <p> failure is increasing with the length of the forecasting horizon.