Press Release: Environmental Accounts. Environmental Protection Expenditure Account. Year 2023.

Main results

The National Expenditure on Environmental Protection increased by 1.7% in 2023 and represented 1.67% of GDP.
The Corporate sector represented 47.4% of total expenditure, Public Administrations 39.1% and Households 13.5%.

More information

The National Environmental Protection Expenditure (NEEP) reached €25.107 million in 2023, which represented 1.67% of Gross Domestic Product (GDP), 14 hundredths more than in 2022.

Domestic expenditure in environmental protection

Millions of euros

The NGPA increased by 1.7% compared to the previous year, 7.4 percentage points lower than the increase in GDP.

Annual change in GDP and National Expenditure on Environmental Protection

Percentage

National Expenditure on Environmental Protection by area

The areas with the greatest weight in the NGPA in 2023 were Waste Management services (60.5% of total expenditure) and Wastewater Management services (19.2%).

On the other hand, those that had the lowest weight were Biodiversity and Landscape Protection (5.2%) and Environmental R&D and other activities (5.6%).

The largest increases in expenditure over the previous year were Biodiversity and Landscape Protection (10.0%) and Environmental R&D and other activities (5.2%).

National Expenditure on Environmental Protection by areas. Year 2023

Millions of euros

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Regarding the contributions to the GNPA increase in 2023, the areas that contributed the most were Biodiversity Protection (0.480 points) and Waste Management (0.488).

National Expenditure on Environmental Protection by institutional sector

The Corporations sector accounted for 47.4% of total expenditure in 2023. More specifically, it amounted to 11,893 million euros, 5.6% less than in the previous year.

The expenditure of the Public Administrations and NPISHs sector represented 39.1% of the total. It reached 9,819 million euros, 12.2% more than in 2022.

On the other hand, Households increased their expenditure by 1.5% up to 3,395 million, representing 13.5% of the total.

National Expenditure on Environmental Protection by institutional sector. Year 2023

Millions of euros

The Public Administrations and NPISHs sector contributed the most to the decline in the NEEP, with a contribution of 4.319 points, followed by the Household sector, with 0.204 points.

National Expenditure Components by institutional sector

The main national expenditure categories in 2023 corresponded to Final Consumption (43.9% of the total), intermediate Consumption (38.3%) and Gross Fixed Capital Formation (18.6%).

The Public Administrations and NPISHs sector accounted for 69.2% of final consumption expenditure and the remaining 30.8% for the Households sector.

On the other hand, the Corporations sector contributed 50.1% of gross fixed capital formation, compared with 49.9% for the General Government and NPISHs sector.

National Expenditure Components. Year 2023

Millions of euros

¹ Intermediate consumption does not include consumption of environmental protection services by specialised producers of such services.
² Net transfers register the balance of transfers paid by the economy to the rest of the world minus those received from the rest of the world.

Data revisions and updates

The data published today is provisional and will be revised when next year's data is released. All results of this operation are available on INEBase.

Methodological note

The objective of the Environmental Accounts (EA) is to integrate environmental information into the central system of National Accounts in a coherent way. They include a set of satellite accounts, which are transmitted annually, compiled using the accounting formats applicable to the different sectoral and territorial areas, with a major presence of physical data. They display the interactions among the economy, households and environmental factors.

The Environmental Protection Expenditure Account (EPEA) presents data on economic resources dedicated by resident units to Environmental Protection (EP). The account’s main objective is to calculate the aggregate National Expenditure on Environmental Protection (NEEP).

This account can be used to construct indicators in key areas: spending on pollution prevention and abatement, contribution of EP activities to the economy and switching to pollution prevention technologies. In addition, by linking EP expenditure to data in physical terms, specific analyses can be carried out on the amount of waste treated, the extent of protected areas and the number of patents for EP products.

For more information, you can access the methodology and the standardised methodological report.

INE statistics are produced in accordance with the Code of Good Practice for European Statistics. More information on Quality at INE and the Code of Best Practices.