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Emission Accounts

The purpose of the Air Emission Account is to illustrate the emission of greenhouse gases and other air pollutants related to industry and households energy consumption and other activities. The accounts can be used for climate and environmental-economic analysis. The emission accounts are developed for 1990 and onwards according to EEA, System of Environmental Economic Accounting, which is a statistical standard published by the UN and several other international organizations provides the "State of the art" for Green National Accounts. The statistics is part of the Environmental-Economic Accounts for Denmark (Green National Accounts).

The climate footprint is an important supplement of the Air Emission Account, which helps to shed light on how activities in Denmark affect the rest of the world. The climate footprint focuses on the emissions that are caused by final consumption. The inventory covers not only the country where consumption takes place, but also helps to shed light on how activities in one country effect other countries through the production of goods and services for import. Thus, the Danish consumption climate footprint includes the emissions that Danish consumers entails in other countries. The calculation of the climate footprint is experimental statistics.

Statistical presentation

The air emission accounts are annually accounts on the emission of greenhouse gases and other air pollutants. The air emission accounts follow the same definitions and classification as National Accounts, which allows for analyses of the connection between the economy and air pollution. The accounts are published in a Danish press release and in StatBank under the subject Energy and air emissions.

The climate footprint is experimental statistics on greenhouse gas emissions calculated in tonnes. The inventory is divided into industries, consumption groups and countries. The climate footprint is disseminated in a Statistics Denmark Analysis and in StatBank Denmark.

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Statistical processing

Emission accounts are compiled taking energy accounts as a starting point for the emissions caused by the use of energy. Emissions caused by other factors than energy use are added subsequently and distributed among the relevant industries.

The climate footprint links the Danish input-output tables to EXIOBASE database and using these the greenhouse gas emissions that Danish consumption gives rise to in Denmark is calculated initially. Next, using multipliers from EXIOBASE, the model calculates the emissions that the import of goods and services for Danish consumption (directly and indirectly) gives rise to in the rest of the world. These multipliers tell us how many emissions imports cause in the world, broken down by industry and country.

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Relevance

Environmental Accounts are relevant for those interested in the correlation between the economy on the one side and environment and natural resources on the other side. Ministries and consultant firms are among the main users of environmental accounts. Accounts are included in the overall European environmental accounts, collected and compiled by Eurostat.

The climate footprint is an important supplement to the emissions accounts, which helps to shed light on how activities in one country have effects in other countries via the production activities created through the import of products. This is important not least in relation to the greenhouse gases, as the problem is global. Therefore, it is important to know how our consumption as a whole contributes to the global emission of greenhouse gases.

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Accuracy and reliability

There is an uncertainty connected to the compilation of Air Emission Accounts as a combination of scientific assumptions and calculations have to be made. Uncertainty inherited in the source data is transferred to the Air Emission Accounts. However, conceptually consistent and over time uniform treatment of source data contribute to increasing the certainty of data.

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Timeliness and punctuality

Data is normally published without delays.

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Comparability

The industry classification in the tables is the same as the one used in the national accounts. The tables can therefore be compared to other statistics based on the industry classification. Accounts are compiled in form of time series. For example accounts for air emissions are available for each year from 1990 until the last year that is published. Accounts are consistent and fully comparable within these years. On the more aggregated level (NACE 64), the Danish accounts are comparable with accounts of other EU countries compiled according to the Regulation no. 691/2011 on European environmental economic accounts.

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Accessibility and clarity

These statistics are published annually in a Danish press release, at the same time as the tables are updated in the StatBank. In the StatBank, these statistics can be found under the subject Energy and air emissions. For further information, go to the subject page for Environmental-Economic Accounting.

The climate footprint is published in Statistics Denmark Analysis: Dansk forbrug sætter i høj grad sit klimaaftryk i udlandet (only in Danish). In Statbank Denmark, the figures are published under the topic Energy and air emissions.

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