Value of green goods, services grows in 2017

The value of Finland’s environmental goods and services sector was nearly EUR 41 billion in 2017.

A total of 136,000 staff-years were made in the environmental goods and services sector and its exports amounted to around nine billion euro, according to the Statistics Finland.

The value added to the environmental goods and services sector was over EUR 13 billion, which was around seven per cent of the value added to the entire national economy.

The share of the value added to the environmental goods and services sector in the entire national economy has grown by around one percentage point from 2012 to 2017.

The turnover of the biggest industry of the environmental goods and services sector, construction, was in 2017 almost EUR 14 billion, that is, one-third of the whole environmental goods and services sector.

A total of 34,000 staff-years were worked in construction and its value addition was EUR two billion.

In 2017, eighty-five per cent turnover from the environmental goods and services sector was connected to resource management and the remaining 15 per cent to environmental protection.

The biggest product categories of resource management were heat and energy saving and management, with a turnover of over EUR 13 billion, production of energy from renewable resources of around EUR eight billion, and management of minerals with a turnover of EUR five billion.

The biggest product categories of environmental protection were waste water management with a turnover of over EUR three billion and waste management with a turnover of EUR two billion.

The value of the turnover from the environmental goods and services sector increased almost eight per cent from 2016 to 2017. The value addition grew by more than nine per cent and the value of exports by nearly 17 per cent.

The number of staff-years increased about two per cent. The majority of the growth in the environmental goods and services sector is explained by increases in low energy construction, the use of recycled metals in the metal industry and the production of bio-based chemicals.