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Nonenergy use is the consumption of fossil fuels as feedstocks for the manufacture of synthetic materials, e.g. plastics. Nonenergy partly leads to short-term carbon dioxide emissions and partly, it is stored in products for longer periods of time. The IPCC guidelines (Reference Approach) offer a top-down method to estimate the amount of stored carbon. An alternative method is material flow analysis, a bottom-up calculation method. A prerequisite for the application of both methods is that nonenergy use data published in national energy balancescomply with a common definition. We found that this is not always the case and that the resulting errors can be considerable, i.e. approx. 10% for Germany and 30% for Italy. Therefore, we performed a harmonization step for nonenergy data. We then applied the IPCC method and material flow analysis to Germany. One result is that the material-flow analysis confirms the outcome according to the IPCC Reference Approach. Another result is that total carbon losses equal about 10% of nonenergy use. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]