What is electricity, gas, steam and air conditioning supply in ISIC Rev. 5?

Electricity, gas, steam and air conditioning supply in ISIC Rev. 5, published by the UN Statistics Division, is the supply side of utilities delivered through networks. It includes producing electricity, moving it through transmission and distribution systems, and supplying gas, steam and cooled or heated air to users. The grouping is deliberately broad because a single supplier may handle more than one utility, and the classification groups supply activities by what is supplied and how it reaches the user. It does not decide tariffs, licences or who may operate a network, and any code must be confirmed with the national statistical institute or business register that holds the record.

Why group four utilities under one supply heading?

Electricity, gas, steam and cooled or heated air look different in a home, but they share a delivery logic that matters for statistics. Each is produced or gathered, moved through a system of pipes, wires or ducts, and delivered to users on an ongoing basis. A supplier may therefore run several of these services together, billing households and businesses for a flow that arrives without the user having to fetch it. Grouping them as supply keeps that shared logic visible: the unit being counted is the service of delivery through a network, not the fuel in the abstract and not the appliance at the end of the line.

What separates supply from making the equipment?

A factory that builds generators, boilers or air conditioning units makes objects. A supply operator runs a system. The distinction is easy to state and easy to blur in conversation, because both are needed before a room is heated. Yet for counting purposes they answer different questions. Manufacturing statistics ask how many units of equipment were produced. Supply statistics ask how much utility service was delivered, through what kind of network, to whom.

Consider the district heating case in more detail. An operator produces steam at a plant, pushes it through insulated pipes under streets, and delivers heat to a set of buildings through the cold months. Meters, pressure, maintenance of the pipe network, and continuity of service through winter are the daily concerns. Contrast the boiler factory: its daily concerns are steel, assembly, testing and shipment. The finished boiler leaves the factory once. The steam leaves the plant continuously. One is a product flow; the other is a service flow. ISIC Rev. 5, published by the UN Statistics Division, keeps those flows apart so that neither set of numbers is inflated by the other.

Which supply activities sit inside this grouping?

Below, the activities for electricity gas steam and air conditioning supply are described in ISIC Rev. 5, published by the UN Statistics Division, as part of this grouping. Read them as examples of the supply work covered, not as a complete code list, since the full publication gives the authoritative detail.

Activity	Note
Generation of electric power from varied sources	Producing power before it enters a network
Transmission and distribution of electricity	Moving power from plant to user
Production and distribution of gas through mains	Gas supplied through a mains system
Supply of steam for heating and industrial use	Steam delivered for heat or process use
Supply of air conditioning through a network	Cooled or heated air delivered through a system

How does the wider Rev. 5 tree place this grouping?

ISIC Rev. 5, published by the UN Statistics Division, contains 22 sections from A to V, 87 divisions, 258 groups and 463 classes, and it was endorsed by the UN Statistical Commission in March 2023. Inside that tree, a section names the broad field, a division narrows it, a group narrows it further, and a class names the precise activity. Reading the supply grouping therefore means reading downwards: the section tells a reader the field is utility supply, while the lower levels specify which utility, which part of the network, and which kind of service. Two activities that sound close at section level can sit far apart once those lower levels are read, which is why a section letter alone never settles a code.

That nesting also explains why the same everyday word can behave differently in statistics and in ordinary speech. A “supplier” in conversation might be anyone who sells equipment, fuel or a service. In this description, supplier means something narrower: a unit operating the network delivery of electricity, gas, steam or air conditioning. Other definitions govern law, trade and engineering. For statistical use, the Rev. 5 description, read in full, is the test.

This guide bases its code statements about electricity gas steam and air conditioning supply on the UN Statistics Division classification detail and the ISIC Rev. 5 publication in the frontmatter.

This guide is offered only as a way to understand a statistical grouping, not as a decision about any reader. It does not fix a code, a principal activity or a registration for you, and if you need one of those settled, the place to confirm it is the national statistical institute or business register that holds the record.