Environmental response indicators for the industrial and energy sector in Flanders

Environmental reporting with quantitative indicators is becoming popular worldwide. However, environmental response indicators, which describe the reaction of societal actors to environmental problems and to government policy, still remain under investigation. This paper describes the collection of potential response indicators for the industry and energy sectors in Flanders, the quality assessment, and the identification of a core set of suitable response indicators. The selected core set consists of four indicators: eco-efficiency (a mainstream indicator for decades), the presence of an environmental management system, the amount of environmental expenditures and the use of sustainable energy. This core set is applied to the Flemish situation in order to assess the environmental performance of the industry and energy sectors. The core set allows identification of areas where the industry and energy sectors are performing better than other sectors, as well as areas where additional efforts are needed. (C) 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.