Not only is the effective NAC preferred for its convenience and efficiency, but also it may be preferred for new or high levels of electronic structure where NACs are not yet present in available software. For nonvariational methods, like configuration interaction without statespecific self-consistent orbitals, coupled cluster theory, or multi-configuration pair-density functional theory, the NAC can be computed by linear response with a Lagrangian formulation, but such calculations can be inconvenient and are often unavailable. Another class of electronic structure methods where NACs may be unavailable is provided by the recently popular machine-learning-based energy calculations. For these reasons, it would be convenient to have approximate NACs that can be evaluated straightforwardly from energies and energetic derivatives. We therefore ask, can we approximate the TDC and effective NAC from energy information, and does this provide enough accuracy for efficient propagation of dynamics? The present paper addresses this question.