Development of quarterly Air emission accounts and environmental footprints based on FIGARO

forthcoming

INSEE (French NSI) and the SDES (statistical office of the French ministry of the environment) want to improve the quality of French environmental accounts and develop their policy uses, mainly in the area of climate change. The project is planned for a duration of 24 months and is split in two sub-projects. The first sub-project consists in developing quarterly greenhouse gases (GHG) Air emission accounts (AEA), as per priority 2.4 of the call (WP2). The main objective of this sub-project is to enhance the visibility and usability of GHG emission indicators in the mainstream economic analysis, for public institutions and private actors. Thanks to quarterly AEA, many economists accustomed to usual monetary national accounts indicators will be able to incorporate greenhouse gas emission into their regular analysis. A secondary objective is to improve the quality of early estimates of annual AEA, building on the nowcasting techniques developed for the quarterly accounts. The second sub-project consists in developing GHG and resource footprints based on FIGARO, as per priority 2.5 of the call (WP3). In late 2024, INSEE and the SDES have completed a first project aimed at estimating the French GHG footprint based on FIGARO, using a so-called “simplified single national accounts consistent” method. This first project laid out a sound foundation for national GHG footprint estimation based on FIGARO, that we now want to extend in several dimensions. We aim for (1) more precise estimates of GHG footprints, by introducing new sectoral and product details; (2) more explicit links with physical energy accounts and (3) study the extension of the methodological framework to other resource footprints. The main objective of the project is to be able to answer new specific users demands, for example regarding the footprint of the food system.