Growth Analysis had been commissioned by the Government to be responsible for the further development of statistics with regard to the Swedish environmental technology sector, and to make these statistics accessible to the general public. The assignment includes the administration of statistics previously produced by the Swedish Environmental Technology Council, Swentec.

By definition the environmental technology sector is a subgroup of the environmental sector – all environmental technology companies are environmental companies but not all environmental companies are environmental technology companies. Unfortunately, no reliable method of identifying which environmental companies are environmental engineering companies exists at the present time. Growth Analysis has therefore chosen to make statistics across the environmental sector available to the general public.

Growth Analysis’ previous statistical report on Sweden’s environmental sector covered the period from 2003 to 2010 in terms of employment turnover, export, employment (2003-2009) and numbers of workplaces. The present report complements the former report with statistics of the environmental sector’s production and value added (2003-2010) and the number of people employed in 2010.

68,446 people were employed in the environmental sector in 2010, a reduction of 525 individuals or just under 1% compared to the previous year. This was the second consecutive year that employment in the environmental sector fell.

The environmental sector’s value added decreased by 7.3% in 2009 compared to 2008. The corresponding figure for the country as a whole was a reduction of 7.2%. According to this measure, the environmental sector has been hit by the financial crisis to the same extent as the economy generally. This does not mean, however, that development of value added was exactly the same in environmental companies as in non-environmental companies in every industry. In Energy production and Agriculture/Forestry/Fishing, the environmental companies fared somewhat better than non-environment companies while in Extraction/Manufacturing, Water/Waste/Sewage/Recycling and Services they fared slightly less well than non-environmental companies.

For 2010 it is not yet possible to describe the development of value added in fixed prices. In current prices, however, value added fell by 2.9% over the previous year.