Eurostat Lot 3 – water/energy accounts

The aim of this project is to provide Eurostat with assistance to the methodological development of water and energy accounts. SERI is leading a highly qualified consortium consisting of the Wuppertal Institute for Climate, Environment and Energy, Statistics Sweden, Statistics Germany and University of Twente which is working in this 2-years project. SERI as overall project leader is also leading Activity 1 on water accounts, while the Wuppertal Institute is the leader of Activity 2 (energy accounts).

During the last years, Eurostat and the so-called “Group of Four” (Eurostat, DG Environment, Joint Research Centre Ispra, and European Environmental Agency) increasingly focused on the implementation of standards and the development of methods and classifications for the production of comparable, reliable and relevant environmental data. Last year Eurostat set a new initiative launching a call on the supply of statistical services in the field of environmental statistics and accounts, which can be seen as the next step in this process towards an overarching, comprehensive, and effective EU-wide (if not worldwide) environmental-economic accounting framework.

Following this call for tender, six different projects are starting this year concentrating on the following topics:

Lot 1: Environmental accounts: statistical services for data collection, processing, dissemination and methodological developments of monetary modules

Lot 2: Environmental accounts: statistical services for data collection, processing and dissemination of physical modules

Lot 3: Environmental accounts: assistance to the methodological development of water and energy accounts

Lot 4: Statistical services in support to Environmental Data Centres on Natural Resources and Products: processing data towards an environmentally extended supply, use, input-output framework

Lot 5: Streamlining of environmental indicators – Indicator Clearing House

Lot 6: Regional environment statistics

There exist clear connections between the different lots. Lots 1-3 aim at methodological developments as well as the realisation of data collection and processing, in order to provide the high-quality data necessary for effective environmental-economic accounting and for reliable analysis. Lot 4 is supposed to provide the frame where the different environmental accounts have to fit in and be integrated with supply-use- or symmetric input-output tables. Lot 5 sets the focus on streamlining environmental indicators, some of them directly derived from the accounting framework. It is clear that such indicators perform better with increasing quality of the underlying data they build on. Finally, in Lot 6, data shall be disaggregated into sub-national, regional data, in order to allow analysing more specific and small-scale environmental problems.

SERI will be working on Lot 3 in a consortium consisting of five partners with long-lasting expertise in the area of environmental accounting, and specifically of energy and water accounts, which will be of key value in the realisation of the tendered work.

The partners of the consortium are: Sustainable Europe research Institute – SERI (Vienna, Austria), Wuppertal Institute (Wuppertal, Germany), University of Twente (Twente, The Netherlands), Statistics Sweden – SCB (Stockholm, Sweden) and Statistics Germany – DESTATIS (Wiesbaden, Germany). While SERI, SCB and University of Twente will carry out Activity 1, Wuppertal and DESTATIS will realise Activity 2.

The two activities will comprise the following actions:

Activity 1: Development of a data collection tables and a compilation handbook for European Water Accounts (Lead: SERI)

Task A: Review on existing standard tables for water accounts

Task B: Preparing and assisting NAMEA Task Force meetings

Task C: Development of Reporting Tables and Compilation Manual for Water Accounts

Activity 2: Preparing and assisting the conceptual and methodological developments of Energy Accounts in the context of Eurostat´s Environment Accounts framework (LEAD: WI)

Task A: Review on existing proposals for conceptual and methodological frameworks for Energy Accounts