Environmental-Economic Accounting (EEA) of the Federal Statistical Office

The Federal Statistical Office has produced environmental-economic accounts since the beginning of the 1990s. They are closely associated with the national accounts that have been in place for an even longer time. The latter reflect, in statistical terms, the economic activities of our national economy (production and consumption) and the input factors (capital and labour). However, the input factors also include the treasures and benefits of nature. In the context of environmental-economic accounting, the concept of capital assets - measured as a monetary value - is therefore extended to cover natural assets which, in this case, are exclusively measured in physical terms. Environmental-economic accounts provide statistical information on the interaction between the economy and the environment. The following questions are answered in this context:

• What types of economic activity cause what environmental burden? Activities to be referred to in this respect are, for instance, the withdrawal of raw materials (sources of energy such as coal or natural gas, water or the like) from the environment or input, by business and industry, of non-exploitable materials into the environment (air emissions such as CO₂, NO_x, SO₂, wastes, waste water, etc.), but also land use and the use of ecosystems for housing and transport purposes as well as other activities.
• What changes do the above activities cause in the state of the environment or the natural assets? Those changes are of a quantitative nature (for example decreasing volume of raw materials) though they include many qualitative aspects, too (for example deterioration of air quality due to pollutant emissions).
• How much money do business and industry and also government spend on environmental protection?