Mineral and energy resources are one of the seven environmental assets considered in the System of Environmental Economic Accounting (SEEA, 2012). They are non-renewable resources which cannot be regenerated over a human timescale in spite of their prominent role in sustaining economic activities. From an economic, environmental and supply security perspective, it is therefore important to gather harmonised data on their rate of extraction and current availability.

Stocks and flows for each commodity are compiled in physical units and three classes of resources are distinguished, as advocated by the SEEA (2012): commercially recoverable resources (Class A), potentially commercially recoverable resources (Class B) and non-commercial and other known deposits (Class C). The definition of these classes is based on the United Nations Framework Classification for Fossil Energy and Mineral Reserves and Resources (UNFC 2009) which, in turn, can be related to two other major classification systems: CRIRSCO for mineral resources and SPE-PRMS for energy resources. A detailed mapping between the classifications used by countries and the SEEA-2012 classification into three classes (A, B and C) is available in the following Excel file: https://stats.oecd.org/wbos/fileview2.aspx?IDFile=c7f5f4ad-9b66-4b8c-a8b9-7a6775bd2a28

More detailed information available in the working paper:"Compiling mineral and energy resource accounts according to the System of Environmental-Economic Accounting (SEEA) 2012"