Revision of SEEA 2003
State of Play – Environmental Goods and
Services Sector
Presentation for the London Group meeting
29 September – 3 October 2008, Brussels
Maja Cederlund, Nancy Steinbach, Viveka Palm - SCB
TF on EGSS (Ute Roewer) - Eurostat
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Headlines
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Background
Starting point
Environmental activities
Environmental products and technologies
Identification of the population of environmental goods
and services sector
Decisions with respect to limitations
The standard tables
Contents of the handbook
Question to the LG
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Background
 Working Group on “Environmental Expenditure Statistics” at
Eurostat agreed on collection of data for the Environmental
Goods and Service Sector (EGSS) in May 2005
 Eurostat decided to develop standard tables and a
methodological handbook
 Task Force at Eurostat (set up 2006) supports the work
 In 2009 the final draft of the standard tables and the handbook
will be presented to the WG for approval
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Starting point
The environmental goods and services industry manual for data collection and analysis,
OECD/Eurostat 1999, defines
Environmental goods and services industry
consists of activities which produce goods and
services to measure, prevent, limit, minimise or
correct environmental damage to water, air and soil,
as well as problems related to water, noise and ecosystems. This includes cleaner technologies,
products and services that reduce environmental
risk and minimise pollution and resource use.
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Environmental activities
 Environmental protection activities
according to the Classification of Environmental
Protection Activities (CEPA)
 Resources management activities
no official classification available
but under development, based on the classification of the
NSI of Italy for the Natural Resource Use and
Management Expenditure Account
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Environmental products and technology
 End-of-pipe products (goods and services) and
technologies
 Cleaner/resource efficient products (goods and services)
are less pollutant and less resource intensive at the time
of their production, consumption, scrapping than the
average good/service sold on the national market
satisfying the same needs.
 Cleaner/resource efficient technology
is a technical process, method or knowledge which
decreases material inputs, reduces energy consumption,
minimises waste disposal problems, recovers valuable
by-products.
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The population of the EGSS
The Problem: environmental activities are regrouped from
many different economic sectors
Two options
 Creating a database of producers of environmental
goods and services in order to ensure good coverage of
the EGSS sector
 Compiling a list of selected goods, services and
technologies which have an environmental purpose and
relating them to their producers
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Definition of EGSS
Sources of identification:
NACE
Products classifications
Business Associations
Internet pages
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Technologies, goods
and services
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Activity
Sources of identification:
NACE
Lists of producers
Business Associations
Internet pages
…
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Business Register
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Database of EGSS population, containing NACE
Source :
Handbook EGSS, ch. 3
code of the activities of the establishments, product
code and the identification number used in the
registers
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Decisions with respect to limitations
 Scope of activities of EGSS is related to the purpose of the
production
 Environmental activities are linked either to EP or to RM
 Activities should be classified under the main environmental
domain according to main purpose and function
 Excluded from the EGSS are natural hazards/natural risk
management and natural resource exploitation
 The scope of goods and services is restricted to those which
primarily are produced to have a favourable impact on
environment
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Decisions with respect to limitations (2)
 Main producer principle
- Environmental sector covers entities which produce
environmental goods, but not their components. The
distribution of environmental goods (selling) is excluded.
- Environmental sector provides (produces) environmental
services, but the subsequent provision, distribution or use is
excluded.
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The standard tables
Which information is of interest for users of the
statistics collected through standard tables?
Which information can be expected to be
provided by the National Statistical Offices?
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The standard tables (2)
Variables
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Turnover
Value added
Employment
Export
Actors (producers)
 Industries, following a NACE oriented breakdown
 General Government, broken down to central, regional,
local government, following the Environmental
Protection Expenditure Account
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The standard tables (3)
Kind of environmental activities
 Environmental protection activities (CEPA)
 Resource management activities (CReMA)
Additional interesting to know
 Which industries produce cleaner/resource efficient
technologies
 Share of principal, secondary, ancillary, market, non-market
production
 Methodology used to gather and compile data
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Contents of the handbook
 Definitions
 Classifications of activities by environmental domains
 Boundary of the chain of production of goods and
services
 Guidance and sources on how to identify the population
 Methods on how to gather statistics for turnover, value
added, employment, exports
 Support on filling in the standard tables
 Possibilities to present and analyse the data
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Question
Should the area of EGSS be included in the New
SEEA as an international standard based on the
work of the TF on EGSS at Eurostat?
?
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Thank you for your attention!
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