A wide range of countries make efforts to track their entire national public energy research, development and demonstration (RD&D) activity on an ongoing basis, also sharing the collected data with the IEA through a standardised template. However, the approaches adopted to collect data vary significantly across countries.

This roadmap describes the variety of country approaches, also identifying the most important common components: the institutional arrangements; the methods for collecting, classifying and validating the data; the data management and technology processes; and, finally, the dissemination. It is intended not only as a guide for countries near the beginning of their journeys towards the collection of energy RD&D, but also for countries with more advanced systems looking to strengthen specific areas.

The roadmap is the product of interviews held with representatives of 20 governments between November 2021 and March 2022, and it is indebted to their generosity in sharing their experiences with tracking national energy RD&D spending. Case studies based on the interviews are used to highlight noteworthy methods, while complete national systems descriptions are included in the annex. It is hoped that this publication will serve as a reference and inspiration for experts in this important area of tracking clean energy transitions and that new experiences can be added in the future.