A method for estimating energy usage of a program code executed by a very long instruction word (VLIW) processor. The program code includes multiple instructions, which are organized as groups referred to as execution sets. The instructions of an execution set are executed simultaneously. A no operation (NOP) energy and incremental instruction energy for each execution set of the program code are determined to compute a base energy of each execution set. An inter-execution set energy of each execution set is then computed. The estimated energy usage of each execution set is determined by adding the corresponding inter-execution set energies to the base energies. A stall energy consumed on account of executing the program code is then computed. Finally, the estimated energy usage of the program code is determined by adding the stall energy to the determined energies of all the execution sets.