Scottish Nitrogen Balance Sheet 2023
The Scottish Nitrogen Balance Sheet brings together evidence on flows of nitrogen in Scotland from across the whole economy to understand and keep track of the use of nitrogen.
Table 9. There have been broadly no major changes to NUE values calculated for previous years.
Comparison between the NUE values for 2022 in last year’s release and this year’s release.
|
NUE Groups |
Input Previously |
Useful Output Previously |
Efficiency Previously |
Input Revised |
Useful Output revised |
Efficiency revised |
|
Arable |
85.8 |
60.1 |
70% |
86.0 |
59.8 |
70% |
|
Livestock |
197.0 |
19.3 |
10% |
197.0 |
20.2 |
10% |
|
Whole Agriculture |
162.8 |
53.6 |
33% |
167.2 |
54.4 |
33% |
|
Aquaculture |
19.9 |
6.3 |
32% |
19.8 |
6.2 |
32% |
|
All Food |
182.6 |
59.9 |
33% |
187.0 |
60.6 |
32% |
|
Forestry |
27.2 |
7.0 |
26% |
27.2 |
7.0 |
26% |
|
Whole Economy |
251.9 |
66.9 |
27% |
255.4 |
67.6 |
26% |
Revisions made to SNBS methodology
There have been no notable changes to SNBS methodology this year.
The most up-to-date data source at time of assembly is used for the SNBS. Wherever the source dataset includes revisions these will be propagated to the SNBS flows. Some of the flows which have seen the largest changes as a result of this include:
- organic fertiliser input to soils (food-based digestate) and organic fertiliser input to soils (manure-based digestate) which are based on agricultural emissions data
- Flows relating to freshwater fish farms in 2022 have been revised downwards based on data in The Scottish Fish Farm Production Survey
- Various changes to atmospheric flows based on the NAEI’s GHG and API data.
- Fossil fuels for use in households & “other” (combustion) due to an upwards revision in DESNZ data on domestic coal use.
- waste disposed by incineration was revised down in 2021 and up in 2022. Based on data from SEPA