Low Carbon and Renewable Energy Economy Survey indirect estimates, UK: 2015 to 2024

• Indirect estimates provide an indication of the effect that direct economic activity has on the wider economy; estimates for direct low carbon and renewable energy economy (LCREE) activity are available in our companion release and dataset.

• UK indirect LCREE turnover was an estimated £32.2 billion in 2024, while indirect employment was estimated at 149,900 full-time equivalents (FTEs).

• The low carbon electricity group within LCREE had the highest estimated indirect turnover (£13.6 billion) in 2024, while the energy efficient products group had the largest estimated indirect employment (50,100 FTEs).

• The 2024 UK indirect LCREE turnover and employment estimates are at their highest level since 2015, the first year for which comparable data is available.

• Estimates of UK indirect LCREE turnover more than doubled (a 105.6% increase) between 2015 and 2024, from £15.7 billion to £32.2 billion, while employment increased by an estimated 40.6%, from 106,600 to 149,900 FTEs, in the same period.

• As our methods to produce LCREE indirect estimates use 2023 UK input-output analytical tables: industry by industry dataset; estimates for 2024 are provisional.

Data sources

More methodology information on appropriate uses, and how the data were created is available in our Low Carbon and Renewable Energy Economy (LCREE) Survey: indirect estimates methodology.

Quality

We have reviewed and updated our methodology for producing LCREE indirect estimates (see the methodology link above).

Our method uses the UK input-output analytical tables: industry by industry dataset.

The methodology used to generate UK input-output tables (IOTs) is constantly under review. A major piece of development work was undertaken in 2017 to generate industry-by-industry IOTs for the first time. Indirect LCREE estimates for 2015 and 2016 are calculated using the 2017 IOT because of a lack of data for these two years.

The latest available version of UK IOTs is the 2023 dataset, first published in December 2025. This lags behind LCREE publication timelines, for which data are available up to the year 2024. Estimates for 2024 are therefore provisional and are calculated using the 2023 IOT. These provisional estimates will be updated once IOTs are available for the corresponding year of LCREE data.

The LCREE survey was conducted for the first time in 2015, to collect data for 2014. Since the publication of these data, we have changed the sampling methodology and the method used to calculate the number of businesses for sectors in the LCREE. We do not advise comparing estimates from 2014 with those from later years of the survey. Estimates for 2014 are not presented in this release or its accompanying dataset because of methodological changes implemented for the survey providing 2015 data.

Limitations

We are aware of a limitation in this method, which results in a bias towards overestimation of the total by summing direct and indirect LCREE estimates. This is because LCREE survey data are currently used to represent direct effect. This is not completely accurate, as the survey data picks up some intermediate demand by different firms in the LCREE. This results in double counting if combining with indirect effects to estimate calculate totals.

An additional limitation to this method when providing indirect LCREE turnover is that it is not currently possible to separate turnover collected from sales from other activity contributing to economic output.

Until these limitations have been addressed, these estimates will continue to be classed as official statistics in development. More information on this can be found in Section 2: Previous methodology of our Low Carbon and Renewable Energy Economy (LCREE) Survey indirect estimates methodology.

Official statistics in development

These are official statistics in development, as the quality of the data still needs more work before they can be published as official statistics. More quality and methodology information on strengths, limitations, appropriate uses, and how the data were created is available in our Low Carbon and Renewable Energy Economy (LCREE) Survey: indirect estimates methodology.