Productivity, employment and exports in Belgium's environmental sector have risen "significantly" since the pandemic, according to figures published on Thursday by the Federal Planning Bureau (FPB).
Belgium's environmental sector includes all activities related to sustainable development. The leading field in the sector is waste management, which accounts for 35% of all production and 37% of employment. This is followed by energy resource management, which accounts for 34% of all environmental sector exports.
Together, waste management and energy resource management account for over half the environmental goods and services sector in Belgium.
The FPB highlights the value of goods and services produced by Belgium's environmental sector, which went up 31% between 2020 and 2022 (from €27.8 billion to €36.5 billion). This is a rapid growth rate compared to a 24% increase in the five years from 2014 to 2019.
The environmental sector has grown faster than the Belgian economy as a whole between 2014 and 2022, although the FPB said that in terms of exports the sector lags behind the overall economy.
And while the value of goods and services produced by the sector in 2021 has grown in the post-pandemic economic recovery, growth in 2022 was largely a result of high inflation.
Gross value added in the sector rose by almost 56% between 2014 and 2022 (from €6.7 billion to €10.4 billion). Over the same period, exports rose from €4.3 billion to €6.6 billion.
Construction of a wind farm in Boneffe (Wallonia), January 2022. The wind farm will have nine wind turbines. Credit: Belga
Where the money's at
Employment in the environmental sector increased from 82,000 full-time workers in 2020 to 89,000 in 2022 (+8%). Apart from a brief halt in 2020, the environmental sector has seen a steady increase in employment growth of around 4% per year since 2014.
Water supply, sewerage, waste management and remediation account for 27% of employment in the environmental sector, followed by public administration (24%) and manufacturing (13%).
The environmental sector's share in the overall Belgian economy has increased over the past decade, accounting for 3% of total production by 2022, 2.1% of gross value added, 2.3% of employment and 1.5% of exports. The share of exports in the environmental sector did fall sharply in 2022, due to the very strong increase in the value of exports of petroleum products and natural gas.
In accordance with EU regulations, Belgium is required to provide the Eurostat (the EU statistics office) with regular environmental economic accounts.
