This indicator tracks trends of industrial emissions of selected water pollutants. The indicator includes releases of certain heavy metals (cadmium, nickel, mercury and lead), nutrients (nitrogen and phosphorus) and a global parameter to indicate the load of organic matter (total organic carbon). These trends are overlaid to the trend in gross value added by industry, as an indicator of the economic contribution of the sector.
The aggregated EU-27 trends feature in Figure 1 while country specific trend changes are offered in Figure 2.
The geographical coverage comprises the 27 EU Member States (EU-27) (Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Czechia, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, the Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, and Sweden).
The temporal coverage is 2010-2020. Data were reported to the European Pollutant Release and Transfer Register (E-PRTR).
Queries are applied to the Industrial Emissions Database (where the E-PRTR is included) to extract and aggregate emissions reported individually for each operator in Europe to produce Figures 1 and 2. Emissions are aggregated at country and European level, indexed to 2010 levels and a trend line is then constructed.
For Fig. 1, the gross added value is indexed to 2010 levels and a trend line constructed.
Gap filling was performed to complete data missing for some countries in the last years of the timeline. Future versions will include more complete datasets as countries resolve these issues as time passes.
While the E-PRTR contains data since 2007, the earlier years are incomplete and of lesser quality. This has led to the indicator showing data starting from 2010.
Methodology for gap filling
Germany, Lithuania and Slovakia did not report any data from 2017; Italy and Malta did not report data for 2020: in these cases the most recent data available have been used to populate the emissions trend.
Anthropogenic emissions of heavy metals, nutrients and organic matter contribute to a wide range of detrimental effects for the environment and human health. While many human activities contribute to these emissions, industry and waste water treatment operations are significant sources.
The European Pollutant Release and Transfer Register (E-PRTR) requires industry operators to submit, among other data, values for direct releases of pollutants into water across 91 pollutants. Additionally, large waste water treatment plants also report to the E-PRTR. These collect water from sewer systems that contain effluents both from industry, commercial, residential and other activities. While they are designed to reduce pollution, their efficiency is not complete and the E-PRTR captures the remaining pollution they release into water ecosystems.
Protection of water ecosystems from industrial emissions is regulated mainly via the water policy and the industrial emission policy. The former has two key pieces of EU law that are most relevant: 1) the mechanisms of priority substances and 2) the waste water treatment plant Directive. This EU legislation imposes a case-by-case permit for large industrial operators, which contains emission limit values to water. If the industry operator releases water to the sewerage system, provisions as to how and which emission levels are acceptable are also foreseen.
This indicator is useful to capture how these mechanisms contribute to a progressive reduction in the final releases to water ecosystems in Europe. Due to the way the reporting mechanisms are designed and the fact that industry is often connected to a sewerage system, this indicator cannot distinguish releases that are fully generated in an industry context, from those that are mixed with other sources (e.g. commercial or residential).
Targets
No targets have been specified.
Methodology uncertainty
No uncertainty has been specified.
Data sets uncertainty
No uncertainty has been specified.
Rationale uncertainty
No uncertainty has been specified.