Instituto Brasileiro de Geografia e Estatística

About the publication - 2015-2018

In general, the Environmental-Economic Accounts comprise an accounting structure to measure and compare, over time, the contribution of natural resources and ecosystems to the social and economic aspects of a given territory, providing dynamic and standardized statistics for planning and decision taking, aiming at fostering more efficient and sustainable choices in the management of resources.

As the IBGE recognizes the importance of the integration of environmental data into the System of National Accounts (SNA), in order to take into account the role of energy in the economy, the conditions of the natural inputs that provide it and all the transactions of environmental interest related to their flows, the IBGE presents, in this report, the results of the study about the Environmental-Economic Accounts for Energy: Products from Biomass (SEEA - Energy).

The information now released is mainly based on the data from the EPE´s Brazilian Energy Balance and from the IBGE´s System of National Accounts (SNA). It shows the major results, in physical and monetary terms, of the resources and uses of energy products from biomass by economic activities and families, using the period between 2015 and 2018 as a reference. They help to understand not only the human impacts on the environment, showing, for example, which energy products from biomass are mostly used by those segments, but also the energy requirements from Brazil and their possible restrictions and solutions. The information produced by the SEEA-Energy can also improve the understanding of the issues related to the effects of the use of economic instruments, as well as provide subsidies for the planning and decision taking by different economic agents, researchers, regulators and formulators of public policies.

This study contributes to the effort of applying international recommendations contained in the System of Environmental-Economic Accounting 2012: Central Framework, SEEA Central Framework and System of Environmental-Economic Accounting for Energy, SEEA-Energy manuals, and aims at obtaining a single methodology that integrates the physical and monetary data and harmonizes the statistics from different countries on this subject, thus fostering the comparability and follow-up of the result in the long term.

The report is also available in printed media. The technical notes, highlighting a glossary with the terms and concepts considered relevant to understand the results, are released apart and can be accessed only in digital media, on this page.

The Environmental-Economic Accounts for Energy: Products from Biomass was developed by the IBGE in partnership with the EPE, supported, in its initial steps, by the German Agency for International Cooperation for Sustainable Development (Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit - GIZ GmbH), through the Ministry of the Environment. The results contribute to the studies about the economic and socio-environmental benefits of the use of a renewable energy matrix with a lower emission of pollutant gases. It is known that the whole set of these statistics shows that this development based on accounting principles is possible, though more surveys in this area are desirable to deepen this subject in Brazil.