Environmental protection expenditure accounts

Statistics Estonia

Economic and Environmental Statistics Department

Grete Luukas

Leading analyst

51 Tatari Str, 10134 Tallinn, Estonia

grete.luukas [at] stat.ee

+372 5332 3939

10/02/2023

10/02/2023

Environmental protection investments, current expenditures and environmental protection revenue

Estonian Classification of Economic Activities (EMTAK 2008) based on NACE Rev. 2

Classification of Environmental Protection Activities and Expenditure (CEPA 2000)

The data collected with the environmental protection expenditure reports do not cover the institutional sectors used in the National Accounts.

Environmental protection receipts and expenditure are published separately for enterprises specialised in environment protection and not specialised in environment protection.

Environmental protection expenditures – the sum of capital and current expenditure on environmental protection activities. Environmental protection expenditures are only such expenditures where the main purpose is to prevent, reduce or eliminate pollutants and pollution or any other degradation of the environment resulting from the operating activity of the company.

Environmental protection investments – all investments where the main purpose is to prevent or reduce pollutants and pollution or any other degradation of the environment.

In-house spending – expenditures, where the main purpose is to prevent, reduce, treat or eliminate pollutants and pollution or any other degradation of the environment resulting from the operating activity of the company, also including labour expenditure, payments for rent, leasing and insurance, expenditure on measuring and monitoring the pollution level, the use of energy and other material goods and the purchase of services. General administration and other activities, which are not directly linked to the environmental protection equipment, such as setting up and maintaining environmental information systems, preparing for environmental licenses, registering and certifying environmental education and information, making environmental reports, etc. are included.

Payments/purchases – all fees, charges, and similar payments to external bodies (outside the reporting unit) in exchange of the environmental protection services related to the environmental impacts of the operating activity of the company (payments for collecting and treating solid waste, collecting and treating wastewater, payments to environmental consultants, payments for removal, treatment or containment of contaminated soil or water body, etc.).

Pollution prevention investments – capital expenditures on new or adapted existing methods, technologies, processes, equipment which is designed to prevent or reduce the amount of pollution created at the source, thereby reducing the degradation of the environment caused by production processes. Pollution prevention involves changes in production, operating processes, or raw materials used to prevent or reduce pollution at the source. In case of substitution of old technology with new more environmental-friendly technology, the difference in the cost of new and old technology is considered environmental protection investment. In case of the modification of existing technology, part of investment made for environmental protection is counted. If the main purpose of investment is different (technical, economical, etc.) it is not regarded as environmental protection expenditure.

Pollution treatment investments (end-of-pipe investments) – capital expenditures on methods, technologies, processes or equipment designed to collect and remove pollution and pollutants after their creation, prevent the spread of and measure the level of the pollution, and treat and dispose of pollutants. These must show the cost of end-of-pipe equipment (devices, machinery, facilities with long operating time without directly influencing the production process), the purpose of which is to collect and remove pollutants from the environment.

Receipts from by-products – revenue from selling by-products of pollution reduction activities (receipts from energy generated or material recovered etc.).

Subsidies/transfers – all types of transfers financing environmental protection activities.

Enterprise

Enterprises whose activity requires environmental protection expenditure

Enterprises specialising in the provision of environmental protection services

FRAME

List of active economic units whose economic activity is potentially polluting (EMTAK 1–3; 5–11; 13–33; 35) or who specialise in the provision of environmental protection services (EMTAK 36–38; 46.771; 71.121; 71.129; 72.191; 81; 91). The list is generated from the Business Register for Statistical Purposes

Estonia as a whole

2001–…

Not applicable

Environmental protection receipts and expenditure – thousand euros

Year

DIRECTLY APPLICABLE LEGAL ACTS

Regulation (EC) No 295/2008 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 11 March 2008 concerning structural business statistics (recast)

Commission Regulation (EC) No 251/2009 of 11 March 2009 implementing and amending Regulation (EC) No 295/2008 of the European Parliament and of the Council as regards the series of data to be produced for structural business statistics and the adaptations necessary after the revision of the statistical classification of products by activity (CPA)

Regulation (EU) No 538/2014 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 16 April 2014 amending Regulation (EU) No 691/2011 on European environmental economic accounts (Text with EEA relevance)

Commission Regulation (EC) No 250/2009 of 11 March 2009 implementing Regulation (EC) No 295/2008 of the European Parliament and of the Council as regards the definitions of characteristics, the technical format for the transmission of data, the double reporting requirements for NACE Rev.1.1 and NACE Rev.2 and derogations to be granted for structural business statistics (Text with EEA relevance)

Commission Regulation (EU) No 446/2014 of 2 May 2014 amending Regulation (EC) No 295/2008 of the European Parliament and of the Council concerning structural business statistics, and Commission Regulations (EC) No 251/2009 and (EU) No 275/2010, as regards the series of data to be produced and the criteria for evaluation of the quality of structural business statistics (Text with EEA relevance)

Commission Implementing Regulation (EU) No 439/2014 of 29 April 2014 amending Regulation (EC) No 250/2009 implementing Regulation (EC) No 295/2008 of the European Parliament and of the Council concerning structural business statistics, as regards the definitions of characteristics and the technical format for the transmission of data (Text with EEA relevance)

Regulation (EU) No 691/2011 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 6 July 2011 on European environmental economic accounts

OTHER LEGAL ACTS

Not available

OTHER AGREEMENTS

Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD)

The dissemination of data collected for the purpose of producing official statistics is guided by the requirements provided for in § 32, § 34, § 35, § 38 of the Official Statistics Act.

The dissemination of data collected for the production of official statistics is based on the requirements laid down in §§ 34 and 35 of the Official Statistics Act.

The principles for treatment of confidential data can be found here.

Notifications about the dissemination of statistics are published in the release calendar, which is available on the website. Every year on 1 October, the release times of the statistical database, news releases, main indicators by IMF SDDS and publications for the following year are announced in the release calendar (in the case of publications – the release month).

Calendar

All users have been granted equal access to official statistics: dissemination dates of official statistics are announced in advance and no user category (incl. Eurostat, state authorities and mass media) is provided access to official statistics before other users. Official statistics are first published in the statistical database. If there is also a news release, it is published simultaneously with data in the statistical database. Official statistics are available on the website at 8:00 a.m. on the date announced in the release calendar.

Annual

Not published

Not published

Data are published in the statistical database at https://andmed.stat.ee/en/stat under the subject area “Environment / Environmental protection and supervision / Environmental protection expenditure” in the following tables:

KK063: Environmental protection expenditures and receipts of enterprises not specialised in environmental protection by economic activity (EMTAK 2008) and environmental protection activity

KK064: Environmental protection expenditures and receipts of enterprises specialised in environmental protection by environmental protection activity.

The dissemination of data collected for the purpose of producing official statistics is guided by the requirements provided for in § 33, § 34, § 35, § 36, § 38 of the Official Statistics Act. Access to microdata and anonymisation of microdata are regulated by Statistics Estonia’s procedure for dissemination of confidential data for scientific purposes.

Data serve as input for statistical activities 10106 “Environmental goods and services sector accounts” and 10107 “Environmental protection expenditure accounts (macro-level)”.

Environmental expenditure statistics: Industry data collection handbook, Eurostat (2005)

Environmental expenditure statistics. General Government and Specialised Producers data collection handbook, Eurostat (2007)

SERIEE Environmental Protection Expenditure Accounts – Compilation Guide, Eurostat (2002)

Not available

To assure the quality of processes and products, Statistics Estonia applies the EFQM Excellence Model, the European Statistics Code of Practice and the Quality Assurance Framework of the European Statistical System (ESS QAF). Statistics Estonia is also guided by the requirements in § 7. “Principles and quality criteria of producing official statistics” of the Official Statistics Act.

Statistics Estonia performs all statistical activities according to an international model (Generic Statistical Business Process Model – GSBPM). According to the GSBPM, the final phase of statistical activities is overall evaluation using information gathered in each phase or sub-process; this information can take many forms, including feedback from users, process metadata, system metrics and suggestions from employees. This information is used to prepare the evaluation report which outlines all the quality problems related to the specific statistical activity and serves as input for improvement actions.

Ministry of the Environment

Ministry of Justice

Stockholm Environment Institute (SEI Tallinn)

Local government authorities

Since 1996, Statistics Estonia has conducted reputation and user satisfaction surveys. All results are available on the website of Statistics Estonia in the section User surveys.

With the application of the environmental protection expenditure acccounting methodology the data will be complete, i.e. macro-level is presented that can be related to the GDP.

The reports present the micro-level. The data are complete and comply with the data composition requirements of Regulation (EC) No 295/2008 of the European Parliament and of the Council.

The accuracy of source data may be low; it is checked by comparing data sources. The type of survey and the data collection methods should ensure sufficient coverage.

Not applicable

Not measured

The data are published 395 days after the end of the reference year (T + 395).

The data have been published at the time announced in the release calendar.

The common international methodology allows a cross-country comparison of the data collected under the regulation on environmental expenditure.

The data are geographically comparable.

The accounting of current environmental protection expenditures changed in 2001. The comparability of data in the time series is ensured since 2001.

Cross-sectoral coherence is relatively low and will improve once the rules on the environmental protection expenditure accounts have been applied.

The outputs of the statistical activity are coherent.

Total time of filling in reports of the statistical activity, hours: 911

Average time of filling in the reports, hours per report:

Ettevõtte keskkonnakaitsekulutused 0,7;

Keskkonnakaitsele spetsialiseerunud ettevõtte keskkonnakaitsekulutused 1

(data for 2022)

The data revision policy and notification of corrections are described in the section Principles of dissemination of official statistics of the website of Statistics Estonia.

The published data may be revised if the methodology is modified, errors are discovered, new or better data become available.

SURVEY DATA

The population is 23,000 enterprises, whose activity requires environmental protection expenditure.

The sample is 1,250 enterprises, whose activity requires environmental protection expenditure; approximately 500 enterprises specialised in environmental protection.

Enterprises specialised in environmental protection and enterprises with at least 50 employees whose activity requires environmental protection expenditure are all surveyed. Stratified simple random sampling by the number of employed persons is applied to enterprises with less than 50 employees.

ADMINISTRATIVE DATA

Annual reports are received from the commercial register of the Centre of Registers and Infomation Systems.

Data on environmental charges are received from the Ministry of the Environment.

DATA FROM OTHER STATISTICAL ACTIVITIES

Data from statistical activity 20300 “Financial statistics of enterprises (annual)” on the expenditure and receipts of enterprises specialized in environmental protection are used.

Annual

Data are collected and the submission of questionnaires is monitored through eSTAT (the web channel for electronic data submission). The questionnaires have been designed for independent completion in eSTAT and include instructions and controls. The questionnaires and information about data submission are available on the website of Statistics Estonia in the section Questionnaires.

Data are collected with the official statistiscs annual questionnaires “Environmental protection expenditure of enterprise” and “Environmental protection expenditure of enterprise specialised on environmental protection”.

Data from the commercial register are received via X-Road. Data from the Ministry of the Environment are received by e-mail.

The validation process consists of arithmetic and quality checks, incl. comparison with other data.

The data are checked against the National Accounts data.

In the case of missing or unreliable data, estimate imputation based on established regulations will be used.

Variables and statistical units which were not collected but which are necessary for producing the output are calculated. New variables are calculated by applying arithmetic conversion to already existing variables. This may be done repeatedly, the derived variable may, in turn, be based on previously derived new variables.

For statistical units weights are calculated, which are used to expand the data of the sample survey to the total population. Weights are calculated for enterprises with less than 50 employees.

Microdata are aggregated to the level necessary for analysis. This includes aggregating the data according to the classification, and calculating various statistical measures, e.g. average, median, dispersion, etc.

The collected data are converted into statistical output. This includes calculating additional indicators.

Not applicable

Not available