Eurostat, the statistical office of the European Union, has today (6 December) published the European Resource Efficiency Scoreboard to monitor progress towards the circular economy in different member states.

In tandem with the European Commission’s (EC) Roadmap to a Resource Efficient Europe, the scoreboard presents a set of 30 ‘robust and easily understandable indicators for assessing the use of natural resources in the EU’, and intends to monitor progress towards a ‘resource-efficient and circular economy’.

It is hoped the scoreboard will ‘communicate the link between resources and economy’ and ‘engage’ stakeholders. Initial findings indicate that in 2011, the UK was much more resource efficient than most other European countries.

Speaking today, Walter Radermacher, Director General of Eurostat, said: “Measuring resource efficiency is a statistical challenge. The scoreboard presents a first set of indicators covering the themes addressed by the roadmap.

“Natural resources – such as materials and minerals, clean air and water, arable land and fish stocks – are fundamental for our quality of life, and ensuring a smarter use of these resources is a key initiative for the future.

“This scoreboard should therefore be of interest not only to political decision makers, but also to all citizens.”

Scoreboard details

Launched to provide ‘an efficient monitoring system’ for how European member states are ‘decoupling economic development from the use of natural resources’, the scoreboard splits indicators into three groups: a lead indicator on resource productivity; a dashboard of indicators focusing on land, water and carbon issues; and a set of specific indicators focusing on the sub-themes in the roadmap ('transforming the economy’, nature and ecosystems' and 'key areas'),

These productivity indicators are defined as the ratio of GDP to different types of natural resources such as materials, water or land and generally cover the period from 2000 to 2012, subject to ‘data availability’.

Lead indicator

Resource productivity has been chosen to measure the principal objective of the Resource Efficient Roadmap and is expressed in euros per kilogramme and also as an index based on the year 2000.

It is accompanied by a ‘domestic material consumption’ indicator (expressed in tonnes per capita), which measures the total amount of material directly used by an economy – such as biomass products, metal ores, fossil fuels, non-metallic minerals, petroleum resources, etc – and is equal to domestic material extraction plus imports minus exports.

UK statistics

In the category of resource efficiency, the UK appears to be doing better than any other European country. In 2011, the last year for which statistics in this category were available, the UK’s resource productivity was 3.22 euros per kilogramme. The next highest country was Luxembourg with 3.21 euros per kilogramme, followed by the Netherlands at 2.89. The countries with the lowest resource productivity levels were Bulgaria, Romania and Latvia at 0.2, 0.21 and 0.32 euros per kilogramme, respectively.

The UK also had a relatively low level of domestic material consumption per capita, at 9.51 tonnes in 2011. This compares with 20.26 tonnes per capita in Luxembourg and 11.49 tonnes in the Netherlands. The highest level of material consumption per capita was in Finland at 33.6 tonnes, while Malta came in lowest with 5.36 tonnes per capita.

Dashboard indicators

These include eight macro-indicators which focus on the ‘key natural resources’ of land, water and carbon.

Land indicators are split into ‘productivity of built-up areas’ (defined as GDP divided by the total surface of built-up areas in a country), and ‘built-up areas (expressed in euros per square kilometre and as a proportion of the total land area), and shows whether these areas are efficiently used to generate added economic value.

These help monitor the roadmap objective to ‘reduce the rate of land taken for housing and industry’.

Water indicators are split into ‘water productivity’ (the ratio of GDP to the total annual abstraction of fresh water removed from any fresh water source, either permanently or temporarily, expressed in euros per cubic metre) and a ‘water exploitation index’ (the ratio of the annual total fresh water abstraction in a country to the long-term average available water), and show how efficiently water is used.

Carbon is split into several categories, including ‘greenhouse gas emissions per capita’ (defined as emissions per capita in tonnes of CO2 equivalent), which monitors the roadmap objective to reach the climate change milestones, and is complemented by indicators on energy production, energy dependence and the share of renewable energy in gross final energy consumption.

Thematic indicators

The scoreboard also breaks down into a set of 20 indicators focusing on the sub-themes of the roadmap – such as ‘transforming the economy’ (which shows progress in turning waste into a resource with indicators on waste generation and treatment) – and aiming to ‘show progress inshifting the economy onto a more resource-efficient path, the pressure on nature and ecosystems and developments in key areas of basic needs with a high impact on the environment’.

Results are based on the most recent statistics from Eurostat, the European Environment Agency, the Commission’s Joint Research Centre and ‘other internationally recognised sources’.

Read more about the Resource Efficiency Scoreboard