2004 environmental protection expenditure by UK industry

The report covers 2004 and records expenditure by extraction, manufacturing and energy supply industries in the UK, providing analyses by type, purpose and by industry sector.

Details can be found on the Defra website via: www.defra.gov.uk/environment/statistics/envsurvey/index.htm.

Key results

• Gross spending on environmental protection in 2004 by UK industry amounted to an estimated £3.2 billion (± £0.6 billion at 95 per cent confidence intervals).

This represents 0.6 per cent of the total turnover for these industries.

• The primary spending sectors were the food, drink and tobacco sector (£576 million), the chemicals and chemical products sector (£544 million) and the power industries (£384 million).
• Of the total environmental protection expenditure, operating expenditure accounted for 81 per cent with the remainder made up of capital expenditure.
• About 29 per cent of the total was spend on solid waste, with a further 34 per cent spent on wastewater and the remaining 37 per cent spent on air, soil/groundwater, noise and nature protection.
• This spending was offset by estimated income of £108 million from the sale of by-products and estimated cost savings of £171 million from environmental protection measures undertaken during the year.

Notes to editors

2. Direct comparisons between survey years are not possible because the estimates are subject to wide confidence intervals and because of improvements made to the questionnaire design and estimation procedures.

3. The 2004 survey was carried out by URS Corporation Ltd. on behalf of Defra.

4. The results relate to spending by production industries (extractive, manufacturing and energy supply industries). The results do not include spending by environment industries such as waste management industry, water and sewerage industry. Around 8,000 companies were surveyed.

5. Environmental protection expenditure is defined as spending incurred where the primary aim is to reduce environmental pollution caused during normal operations – that is, expenditure to reduce or prevent emissions to air or water, to dispose of waste materials, to protect land, soil and groundwater, to prevent noise and vibration, or to protect the natural environment.

6. ‘Integrated’ capital expenditure on environmental protection relates to new or modified production facilities, which have been designed so that environmental protection is an integrated part of the process. ‘End-of-pipe’ capital expenditure relates to equipment used to treat, handle, measure or dispose of emissions and wastes from production.

7. The UK submits results from this survey to Eurostat in order to meet its reporting obligations under the European Council Regulation on Structural Business Statistics (no. 58/97).

8. The results are not classified as National Statistics because of the low response rates.

End

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