Press Release: Environmental Accounts. Environmental Protection Expenditure Account. Year 2024.

Main results

The National Expenditure on Environmental Protection increased by 1.2% in 2024 and accounted for 1.59% of GDP.
The Corporate sector accounted for 48.3% of total expenditure, 2.5% above the previous year.

More information

The National Environmental Protection Expenditure (NEEP) reached € 25.233 billion in 2024, which accounted for 1.59% of Gross Domestic Product (GDP), six hundredths less than in 2023.

Domestic expenditure on environmental protection

Millions of euros

NEEP increased by 1.2% compared with the previous year, 6.3 percentage points less than the increase in GDP.

Annual variation in GDP and National Expenditure on Environmental Protection

Percentage

National Expenditure on Environmental Protection by area

The areas with the greatest weight in the NGPA in 2024 were Waste Management services (60.5% of total expenditure) and Wastewater Management services (18.4%).

On the other hand, those that had the lowest weight were Biodiversity and Landscape Protection (5.4%) and Environmental R&D and other activities (6.5%).

Waste management services were the only services to increase (by 3.4%). Biodiversity and landscape protection services recorded the largest decline (-10.0%).

National Expenditure on Environmental Protection by areas. 2024

Millions of euros

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Regarding the contributions to the NEEP in 2024, the area that contributed the most was Waste Management (2.067 points).

National Expenditure on Environmental Protection by institutional sector

The Corporations sector accounted for 48.3% of total expenditure in 2024. More specifically, it amounted to 12,201 million euros, 2.5% more than in the previous year.

The expenditure of the Public Administrations and NPISHs sector represented 38.1% of the total. It reached 9,611 million euros, 0.4% less than in 2023.

On the other hand, Households increased their expenditure by 1.5% up to 3,395 million, representing 13.5% of the total.

National Expenditure on Environmental Protection by institutional sector. 2024

Millions of euros

The Corporate sector contributed the most to the rise in the NEEP, with a contribution of 1.209 points, followed by the Household sector, with 0.108 points.

National Expenditure Components by institutional sector

The main national expenditure categories in 2024 were Final Consumption (43.9% of the total), Intermediate Consumption (36.2%) and Gross Fixed Capital Formation (21.8%).

The Public Administrations and NPISHs sector accounted for 69.1% of final consumption expenditure and the remaining 30.9% for the Households sector.

On the other hand, the Corporations sector contributed 57.4% of gross fixed capital formation, compared with 42.6% for the General Government and NPISH sector.

National Expenditure Components. 2024

Millions of euros

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¹ Intermediate consumption does not include consumption of environmental protection services by specialised producers of such services.
² Net transfers register the balance of transfers paid by the economy to the rest of the world minus those received from the rest of the world.

Data revisions and updates

The data published today is provisional and will be revised when next year's data is released. All results of this operation are available on INEBase.

This synthesis complies with the reporting requirements of Commission Delegated Regulation (EU) 2025/1131 of 26 March 2025, amending EU Regulation No 691/2011 of the European Parliament and of the Council as regards climate change mitigation investments and introducing the classification of environmental purposes.

Methodological note

The objective of the Environmental Accounts (EA) is to integrate environmental information into the central system of National Accounts in a coherent way. They include a set of satellite accounts, which are transmitted annually, compiled using the accounting formats applicable to the different sectoral and territorial areas, with a major presence of physical data. They display the interactions among the economy, households and environmental factors.

The Environmental Protection Expenditure Account (EPEA) presents data on economic resources dedicated by resident units to Environmental Protection (EP). The account’s main objective is to calculate the aggregate National Expenditure on Environmental Protection (NEEP).

This account can be used to construct indicators in key areas: spending on pollution prevention and abatement, contribution of EP activities to the economy and switching to pollution prevention technologies. In addition, by linking EP expenditure to data in physical terms, specific analyses can be carried out on the amount of waste treated, the extent of protected areas and the number of patents for EP products.

For more information, you can access the methodology and the standardised methodological report.

INE statistics are produced in accordance with the Code of Good Practice for European Statistics. More information on Quality at INE and the Code of Best Practices.