Productivity in Ireland 2021

Get the data: PxStat PIA15

Get the data: Environmental Accounts Air Emissions 2020

The two charts above show GVA per Employee⁴ versus Greenhouse Gas emissions per employee over the period 2013 to 2021. Among the sectors shown, Manufacturing had the highest GVA per Employee at close to €400,000 per employee from 2015 onwards, however the sector had one of the lowest greenhouse gas emissions per employee for much of the same period at under 30t CO₂e per employee. The Manufacturing sector is dominated largely by companies involved in the production of pharmaceutical, electronic & optical products. These sectors generate enormous amounts of GVA, however the associated emissions on a per employee basis are not particularly significant. These sectors rely heavily on electricity for production and the related emissions are recorded in the Electricity, Gas & Steam sector.

The Electricity, Gas & Steam sector produced the highest emissions per employee, although they have fallen from 1,112t CO₂e per employee in 2013 to 697t CO₂e per employee in 2021, with the increased use of renewables. However, the GVA per employee was below Manufacturing and ICT at between €178,000 and €270,000 per employee. While this sector is quite productive, it is still one of the biggest emitting sectors, due to fossil fuels used in the power generation process.

Among the sectors shown, Agriculture was one of the least productive sectors over the nine-year period at under €35,000 per employee. However, the sector was one of the largest emitters of Greenhouse Gases averaging 194t CO₂e per employee. This is mainly due to the large cattle herd in Ireland.

The Transportation & Storage sector was the worst impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic. The level of labour productivity halved from €61,000 per employee in 2019 to €36,000 in 2020. There was a corresponding fall in emissions per employee from 196t CO₂e in 2019 to 90t CO₂e in 2020.

Despite the rapid increase in GVA per employee over the period, there has not been a corresponding increase in emissions in the ICT sector. ICT emissions per employee remained at between 1 to 2t CO₂e, while GVA per employee as presented in Figure 5.1 has been trending upwards since 2017 reaching €470,000 in 2021. This increase has been driven by imports of intellectual property products.

⁴ GVA used in these calculations is the chain linked constant price estimates from the Annual National Accounts 2021.

Get the data: Environmental Accounts Air Emissions 2020 and Data Centres Metered Electricity Consumption 2020

Figure 5.3 shows estimated emissions from data centres as a percentage of total emissions in the Electricity, Gas & Steam sector. Data centres are constructed to house computer systems and servers and are an increasingly significant feature of the ICT sector. They are large consumers of electricity, however similar to the Manufacturing sector, a large proportion of the emissions associated with them are assigned to the Electricity, Gas & Steam sector. In line with the development of additional data centres since 2015, the related emissions have been increasing steadily in the period, rising from 5% in 2015 to 14% in 2021.

Get the data: Environmental Accounts Air Emissions 2020 (Ireland) and Eurostat

Emissions per employee across a selection of EU countries in 2021 is shown above. Ireland recorded the highest emissions per employee at 23t CO₂e in 2021 which was above the EU average of 14t CO₂e per employee.

Get the data: Environmental Accounts Air Emissions 2020 

Figure 5.5 shows the adjusted emissions per employee which are accounted for in the Manufacturing sector. A result of 27t CO₂e per employee was reported when contract manufacturing is not included in the Irish emissions. However, adjusting for contract manufacturing emissions increased to 36t CO₂e per employee in 2021.