Economic aspects of the circular economy

Our assignment

Currently, data is scarce on economic activities related to the circular economy, climate change mitigation and adaptation, and other sectors relevant to environmental policy. Effective EU policy in these areas requires robust data on economic aspects such as production, jobs created, investments and gross value added of companies operating in these sectors. Currently, national statistical offices collect no or only relatively limited economic data on these sectors.
With this in mind, Eurostat has commissioned Prognos and DevStat to develop a methodological approach to derive key environmental variables on economic activities related to the circular economy, climate change mitigation and adaptation. This approach can also be used as a framework for other environmentally relevant economic sectors.

How we proceed

The methodology serves as a framework for collecting data on environmentally relevant economic sectors and can be broadly summarised as follows:

1. Conceptual framework: Definition of the sector to be studied.
2. Mapping of the relevant economic activities and matching with the integrated system of economic classification.
3. Collection and compilation of data

Within the project, a tool for a fully automated compilation of the data will also be developed. This will allow for regular updates of the data set and serve as a basis for a possible upload into the Eurostat database.

Project team

Jannis Lambert, Richard Simpson, Philipp Hutzenthaler