Four environmental-economic accounts that contain monetary information about various environmental transactions have been updated and released, Stats NZ said today.
The environmental-economic accounts updated with data up to year ended March 2020 are:
- Environmental tax account: 1999-2020
- Environmental protection expenditure account: 2009-2020
- Renewable energy stock account: 2007-2020
- Marine economy: 2007-2020.
Environmental-economic accounts show how the environment and the economy interact, how our natural resources contribute to our national wealth, as well as how we respond to environmental issues.
Comparing the year ended March 2020 to the previous year:
- Environmental taxes increased by $315 million (5.7 percent) to total $5.8 billion. Despite this increase, the proportion of environmental taxes to the total New Zealand tax take remained relatively unchanged at 5.5 percent.
- Total local government environmental protection expenditure increased by $62 million (4.9 percent) to total $1.3 billion. The proportion of overall local government environmental protection expenditure to total financial consumption expenditure remained relatively unchanged at 19 percent.
- Renewable energy asset value increased by $3.2 billion (23 percent) to total $17.1 billion. The proportion of renewable energy generation remained relatively unchanged at 83 percent.
- Total marine economy value added increased by $176 million (4.0 percent) and is now at $4.5 billion. Marine economy’s contribution to total GDP remained relatively unchanged at 1.4 percent.
About the data
Stats NZ’s environmental-economic accounts show the interactions between the environment and the economy to provide a clearer understanding of environmental-economic pressures, dependencies, trade-offs, and impacts. It is done within the United Nations’ System of Environmental-Economic Accounting (SEEA) framework which specifies how environmental data can be integrated coherently with economic data from the System of National Accounts.
