Environmental protection expenditure

The environmental investments and current expenditure are divided into seven categories

• Emissions of greenhouse gases
• Other emissions to ambient air
• waste water management
• soild waste
• soil, groundwater and surface water as well as ocean and ocean floor
• biological diversity and landscape
• "other"

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

Name: Environmental protection expenditure
Topic: Nature and the environment

Division for Structural Business Statistics

All figures are presented on the national level

The statistics is an annual survey and published approximately 12 months after  the end of the survey year.

Annual reporting to Eurostat according to the Council reegulation 295/2008, amended by regulation 251/2009

Bi-annual reporting to the OECD/Eurostat joint questionnaire for environmental protection expenditure and revenues (JQ-EPER).

The data are stored in Oracle databases and as SAS data. Edited micro data and raw data are also stored permanently as text files.

The statistics provides information about investments and current expenditure on environmental protection within the mining, quarrying and other industries.

The first publication was for the year 2000. For 2000 and 2001, only end-of-pipe investment figures are available. From 2002 the statistics encompasses end-of-pipe investments, investments in integrated technology and current expenditures for environmental protection.

From 2008, the statistics also includes oil and gas extraction, including fields where production is terminated and, the associated on shore installations. For 2008 the statistics for these industries was published separately.

Potential users are public authorities, professional and industrial bodies, research institutions and private users (e.g. business organisations).

No external users have access to the statistics and analyses before they are published and accessible simultaneously for all users on ssb.no at 8 am. Prior to this, a minimum of three months' advance notice is given in the Statistics Release Calendar.

Read more about Principles for equal treatment on ssb.no

Environmental protection expenditure in the manufacturing industry and in the quarrying and mining industries is related to the structural statistics. International reporting of figures are performed in conjunction with these statistics.

Statistics Act of 19. July 1989, §§2-2 and 2-3.

Council regulation no.295/2008, amended by regulation no. 251/2009.

The survey on environmental protection expenditure includes all business in the manufacturing, mining and quarrying industries as defined in the Norwegian Standard Industrial Classification, SIC .

The statistics does NOT include service enterprises, offshore exploration and development nor transport of oil and gas via pipelines.

The statistics is based on information collected using a questionnaire sent to a selection of businesses.

For the oil and gas extraction, the questionnaire collects information from all offshore field operators and operators of onshore installations.

The questionnare is distributed in May/June, i.e. when most businesses have finalized their annual accounts.

The data collected are subject to a thorough micro level editing. To ensure consistency, the data are related to relevant data from the previous year, production statistics,the Central Register of Establishments and Enterprises and the businesses annual accounts.

Not relevant

Standard confidentiality rules are applied. This means that information on a statistic is only published if there is at least three or more entities in an industry division that have reported values.

Statistics for environmental protection investment in end-of-pipe equipment was established from the year 2000. From 2002 information on investments in integrated technology and current expenditures for environmental protection are also available.

From 2008, the statistics has been revised in three respects:
The revised classifcation of industries (NACE rev.2) is used. This means that figures on individual industries should not be compared with the figures for 2002 - 2007.
Environmental expenditures for oil and gas extraction on the Norwegian continental shelf has been included (published separately for 2008).
Finally, expenditure on emissions to air/climate was separated into two categories: expenditure on reduced emissons of greenhouse gases and other emissions to ambient air.

Starting in 2013, the statistics for onshore manufacturing industries is no longer based on a randomly selected sample of establishments. All enterprises with certain characteristics are required to submit the questionnaire. In particular, this means that reported expenditure on waste and waste water, does not represent an estimate for all Norwegian businesses. 

The establishments have some discretion in defining the percentage of current expenditures and integrated investments that should be included.

Not relevant