Environmental protection expenditure

The environmental investments and current expenditure are divided into nine categories

• protection of ambient air and climate
• wastewater management
• waste management
• protection and remediation of soil, groundwater and surface water
• noise and vibration abatement
• protection of biodiversity and landscapes
• protection against radiation
• environmental research and development
• other environmental protection activities

This is in accordance with Classification of Environmental Protection Activities and Expenditures (CEPA 2000) developed by Eurostat in cooperation with the UN (UNECE/CES).

Environmental protection expenditure Environmental protection expenditure covers expenses for activities whose primary objective is to prevent, reduce or treat pollution or other damages to the physical environment. The statistics comprise three areas:

• Current expenditure End-of-pipe investements Investements in integrated technology

All expenditures are exclusive of VAT and other taxes and not adjusted for possible financial support.

Production of environmentally friendly products and other measures that are not explicitly motivated by an environmental concern, are not defined as environmental expenditures.

Current expenditure Current expenditure includes wages, services, emission fees and other expenditure related to operation and maintenance of environmental protection equipment.

End-of-pipe investments This category includes investments in facilities for surveillance, control, prevention, reducing or cleaning emissions or effluents. It covers investments in equipment which is independent of the production process

Investments in integrated technology This category includes investments that are an integral part of the production process with the stated purpose of reducing environmental impacts. Replacement of existing equipment is only included if the new equipment has a better environmental performance than the industry standard, where only the additional expenditure is to be reported.

An enterprise is defined as an organizational unit comprising all economic activities engaged in by one and the same owner. Hence, an enterprise is a the smallest legal entity covering one or more productive units (local establishments).

An establishment is defined as a local kind-of-activity unit (Local KAUs), which at a single physical location is engaged mainly in activities within a specific industry group. This definition conforms to ISIC Rev. 3.

From 2008, a revised classificaition of enterprises and establishment is used. This implies the exlusion of some enterprises and inclusion of others compared to 2002 - 2007, and that the statistics cannot be readily compared at the industry section level. However, the discrepancy, computed with the new vs the previous classifications, between the aggregated totals for the entire mining, quarrying av manufacturing industries, are of the order of 5 per cent.

For a more detailed description of concepts and variables common to the environmental survey and industry structure statistics, please refer to: Manufacturing statistics. Structural data