Flash Eurobarometer 426. SMEs, Resource Efficiency and Green Markets

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1 SMEs, Resource Efficiency and Green Markets Fieldwork Publication December 2015 Survey requested by the European Commission, Directorate-General for Internal Market, Industry, Entrepreneurship and SMEs and co-ordinated by the Directorate-General for Communication This document does not represent the point of view of the European Commission. The interpretations and opinions contained in it are solely those of the authors. TNS political & social

2 SMEs, resource efficiency and green markets Survey conducted by TNS political & social at the request of the European Commission, Directorate-General for Internal Market, Industry, Entrepreneurship and SMEs Survey co-ordinated by the European Commission, Directorate-General for Communication (DG COMM Strategy, Corporate Communication Actions and Eurobarometer Unit

3 INTRODUCTION This report is a complement to the Flash 426 Eurobarometer report on SMEs, resource efficiency and green markets. In the main report, findings from the current survey present the analysis at EU and Member State level and by company profile breakdowns. Wherever possible, comparisons with the previous survey were also drawn. In this report, an estimation of the number of green jobs is calculated at the EU level using both the results collected in this survey and universe figures from Eurostat. In this report, a few terms have been used throughout and should therefore be defined here: An SME is a small- or medium-sized enterprise with less than 250 employees. In this report, a micro enterprise is defined as having 9 employees or less, a small enterprise as having 10 to 49 employees and a medium-sized enterprise as having 50 to 249 employees. In this survey, only SMEs were interviewed since they constitute around 90% of the global sample of businesses. Company profiles have also been broken down by sector, which is defined using NACE codes. A NACE code is a four-digit classification, which provides a framework for collecting statistical data according to economic activity. In this report, the NACE codes have been grouped into the following sectors: manufacturing including companies that fall under NACE code C, industry including codes B, D, E, F, retail including G code and finally, services including codes I, J, K, H, L, M. Note: In this report, countries are referred to by their official abbreviation. The abbreviations used in this report correspond to: Belgium BE Latvia LV Czech Republic CZ Luxembourg LU Bulgaria BG Hungary HU Denmark DK Malta MT Germany DE The Netherlands NL Estonia EE Austria AT Greece EL Poland PL Spain ES Portugal PT France FR Romania RO Croatia HR Slovenia SI Ireland IE Slovakia SK Italy IT Finland FI Republic of Cyprus* CY Sweden SE Lithuania LT United Kingdom UK We wish to thank the people throughout Europe who have given their time to take part in this survey. Without their active participation, this study would not have been possible. 1

4 GREEN EMPLOYMENT SMEs were asked the exact number of employees that work in green jobs. This section looks at green employment in the SME segment across all Member States and provides a simple estimation of the number of green jobs that might exist in the EU. Defining the green job The definition of a green job as provided by the International Labour Organisation is a job that helps to reduce the negative environmental impact of the company and ultimately helps to build a more environmentally, economically and socially sustainable enterprise. According to Martinez- Fernandez et al., in Green entrepreneurship, eco-innovation and SMEs, The Department of Environment and Climate Change and the Environment Institute of Australia and New Zealand on the other hand defined green collar jobs as managers, professionals and technicians who work in green organisations or have green skills or responsibilities. They also include services, clerical, sales and semi-skilled workers who work in green organisations. One problem that is highlighted, however, is that there is still no consensus over what constitutes as a green organisation 1. In this survey, the definition given to respondents was a lot broader: A green job is one that directly deals with information, technologies, or materials that preserves or restores environmental quality. This requires specialised skills, knowledge, training, or experience (e.g. verifying compliance with environmental legislation, monitoring resource efficiency within the company, promoting and selling green products and services) 2. Therefore since definitions are so different, it is very difficult to compare and verify figures when looking at the number of green jobs in the market. 1 Green entrepreneurship, eco-innovation and SMEs, p FL423 SMEs, resource efficiency and green markets (2015) Q22: In your company, how many of your full time employees, including yourself, work in green jobs some or all of the time? 2

5 3.1. in the EU Member States The mean number of employees working in green jobs in SMEs in the EU28, as calculated in this survey, is 1.70 the green line in the below graph highlights this overall level. At a national level, some countries follow close to this mean, while the rest are distributed below and above the line 3. Romani, Bulgaria and Croatia (3.63, 3.35 and 2.98, respectively), the most recent Member States, report the highest mean of green jobs. At the other end of the scale, SMEs in Estonia (0.44) averages less than one green employee per company, followed by Italy (1.01), the UK (1.15) and Portugal (1.18) Mean number of green jobs in each EU28 Member State EU28 mean score Results at country level vary quite a lot also due to the broad definition of what a green job is. The understanding of a green job changes from company to company and from Member State to Member State and this contributes to the large variations at country level. 3

6 3.2. Profiles of all active SMEs and green SMEs that have green employment Looking at the business demographics, the mean number of green jobs differs across SMEs in terms of size (measured as the number of employees), sector of activity, turnover and evolution in turnover over the last two years, client groups to which the SME sells its products or services and company age. Unsurprisingly, the number of green jobs increases with the size of company. Micro companies with 1-9 employees have on average only 1.11 green job allocated in their premises, while this value increases to for medium-sized enterprises. Sector of activity plays a role in the number of green jobs found in an SME. Manufacturing and industry SMEs (mean values 2.07 and 1.93, respectively) host more green employment than retail or services companies (mean score 1.42 and 1.62, respectively). A similar pattern is noticed for turnover and the state of turnover over the past two years. The mean number of green jobs increases with larger turnover figures as well as for companies for which turnover has increased in the last two years. Generally, the larger the turnover of an SME, the larger the reported mean number of green jobs (1.15 for companies with a turnover of less than 100,000 euros vs for companies with a turnover of more than 10 million euros). is also more common among SMEs that have witnessed an increase in their turnover (mean 2.06) or where it remained unchanged (mean 1.67) than for those for which turnover decreased (mean 1.51). However, it should be emphasized that this is also related to a size effect as companies that have large turnovers generally have more employees. SMEs that sell their products or services to other companies have a higher mean number of green jobs (mean 1.91) than those that sell directly to public administration (1.85) or consumers (mean 1.58). Finally, when looking at the age of the company, it can be concluded that the longer an SME is in business, the more green employment it holds. Older companies that have been established before the 1 st of January 2008 have on average 1.80 green jobs while the mean values for younger companies vary between 1.17 and

7 Q22 In your company, how many of your full time employees, including yourself, work in green jobs some or all of the time? (% - EU) Mean EU Company size 1-9 employees employees employees Sectors grouped (NACE) Manufacturing (C) 2.07 Retail (G) 1.42 Services (I/J/H/L/M) 1.62 Industry (B/D/E/F) 1.93 Turnover Less than euros 1.15 More than to euros 1.56 More than to 2 million euros 1.92 More than 2 to 10 million euros 3.15 More than 10 to 50 million euros 6.39 More than 50 million euros 5.69 State of turnover Increased 2.06 Decreased 1.51 Remained unchanged 1.67 Client (groups) Directly to consumers 1.58 To other companies 1.91 To public administration 1.85 Company age Before 1 January Between 1 January 2008 and 31 December Between 1 January 2011 and 1 January After 1 January

8 3.3. Estimation of green jobs at the EU level a. Methodological note Using the data that comes from the sample of this Flash survey and the Universe figures provided by Eurostat s business demography data 4, this section presents a projection of the number of green jobs that may exist in all SMEs across the European Union. It is very important to note that initial samples for this B2B survey were designed to achieve betweencountry comparisons rather than measurement estimations of this nature. This is not only because of the miniscule sampling fractions, but also because of the large standard deviations inherent in the sample data. Therefore, it should be emphasized that this is a rough estimation that needs to be taken with caution as the confidence intervals of the calculated figures are quite wide. Number of green jobs at EU level The calculation of the number of green jobs at the EU level takes into account two intertwined company features: size and sector. Size is measured by the number of employees, split into three categories: 1-9 employees for a micro company, employees for a small company and for a medium company. Sector is comprised by four main groupings of the NACE codes 5 : manufacturing including companies that fall under sector C, industry including codes B, D, E, F, retail including G sector and finally, services including codes I, J, H, L, M 6. These cross-tabulations are presented in the contingency table below: Cross-tabulation of company size and sector 1 to 9 employees 10 to 49 employees 50 to 249 employees Company sector x size Industry (B/D/E/F) Micro Industry Small Industry Medium Industry Manufacturing (C) Micro Small Medium Retail (G) Micro Retail Small Retail Medium Retail Services (I/J/H/L/M) Micro Services Small Services Medium Services These two dimensions are crossed at both the Universe and sample level. The cross-tabulation is done at the aggregated EU level since the bases per country are too small. By crossing the Universe data for size and sector, the number of SMEs per cell is retrieved, e.g. the number of industry companies that have 1-9 employees, the number of industry companies that have 4 phy Sector K on financial and insurance activities is removed from the estimation since the Universe data was not obtained for this code. 6

9 10-49 employees, the number of industry companies that have employees, the number of manufacturing companies that have 1-9 employees etc. The next step is to calculate the weighted mean for each of these cells. The weighted mean indicates the mean number of green jobs that exists in one micro industry company, one small industry company at EU level etc. Knowing the mean number of green jobs per size and sector and the number of companies that exist per size and sector, the estimate for the number of green jobs is calculated across the EU by simple multiplication. Summing up those estimates per size and sector will then present the total number of green jobs at the European Union level. b. The estimated number of green jobs across all active SMEs at the EU level - The estimated number of green jobs in EU28 in all active SMEs is more than 25 million - The below table presents the estimation of green jobs by size and sector at EU28. Micro companies account for a large proportion of the number of SMEs - more than 90%. Similarly, retail and service sectors account for almost three-quarters of the total number of active SMEs. This explains why the number of green jobs across these segments is larger than for any other segment. There are more than 25 million green jobs in SMEs in the European Union 7. When looking at sectors, retail and services hold the highest amount of green jobs (with about 7 and 10 million, respectively). In terms of company size, the largest number of green jobs is found in the micro segment (about 20 million). Micro SMEs in the service sector (8 million) have by far the most green employees with more than four times of that in manufacturing (less than 2 million). However, manufacturing companies have the largest number of green employees within the small enterprises (more than 1 million). Nonetheless, the distribution varies much less in comparison to medium enterprises: the biggest contrast is between the industry and the services sectors (about 0.2 vs. 0.7 million). 7 All figures in this section should be interpreted with caution for the reasons outlined in the methodological note. 7

10 Universe figures of active SMEs in EU28 1 to 9 employees 10 to 49 employees 50 to 249 employees Company sector x size Manufacturing (C) 1,729, ,391 71,342 Industry (B/D/E/F) 3,094, ,276 25,628 Retail (G) 5,446, ,219 44,551 Services (I/J/H/L/M) 7,675, ,161 53,930 Weighted mean number of green jobs 1 to 9 employees 10 to 49 employees 50 to 249 employees Company sector x size Manufacturing (C) Industry (B/D/E/F) Retail (G) Services (I/J/H/L/M) Estimation of green jobs across all active SMEs in EU28 1 to 9 employees 10 to 49 employees 50 to 249 employees Total EU28 19,707,273 3,728,777 2,076,751 25,512,801 Company sector x size Manufacturing (C) 1,846,221 1,184, ,068 3,634,109 Industry (B/D/E/F) 3,818, , ,377 4,758,865 Retail (G) 5,969, , ,865 7,467,433 Services (I/J/H/L/M) 8,073, , ,441 9,652,394 8