Question 1

What sectors (products and industries) are included?

Accepted Answer

EXIOBASE covers the whole economy as 200 products across 163 industries (including 12 electricity-generation technologies), with extra detail on environmentally intensive sectors. The classification is based on NACE 1.1 / CPA 2002. See the products & industries list.

Question 2

What countries and regions are included?

Accepted Answer

44 explicitly modelled countries (the EU-27 plus 17 major trading partners) and 5 Rest-of-World (RoW) regions, one per continent, for 49 regions in total. The 44 countries cover about 90% of global GDP. The emission factor dataset also provides averages for 4 regional groups and a world average on top of the 49 regions. See the regions list.

Question 3

Why "only" 44 countries and 5 RoW regions?

Accepted Answer

EXIOBASE was built to analyse the EU and its main trading partners; other countries sit inside the Rest-of-World aggregates mainly because data at the required detail wasn't available. The 44 cover ~90% of global GDP. Splitting RoW into individual countries is possible but introduces many assumptions and can reduce reliability. Higher country resolution is on the roadmap.

Question 4

Why "only" 200 sectors?

Accepted Answer

EXIOBASE grew from EU research projects (EXIOPOL, CREEA, DESIRE). National supply-use tables usually come at ~64 sectors; EXIOBASE disaggregates these to 163 industries / 200 products using production and trade data, focusing detail on impact-intensive sectors. Higher resolution means every environmental account must also be disaggregated, which adds assumptions. Higher sector resolution is on the roadmap.

Question 5

What years are available, and what's the update cadence?

Accepted Answer

The latest EXIOBASE model (v3.11) covers 1995-2023; the public Zenodo release (v3.10.2) currently reaches 2022. EXIOBASE is moving to annual updates with a typical ~2-year data lag: the release at the end of a year Y generally reaches data year Y−2, because the key underlying statistics publish on that delay. Years beyond the latest data year are "now-cast" estimates (see below).

Question 6

What data and reference years are used?

Accepted Answer

EXIOBASE integrates many sources, each with its own lag: about 1 year for some macro data (e.g. UN), 2-3 years for most (Eurostat supply-use tables, trade, energy). Each Zenodo release documents the exact vintages.

Question 7

What are "now-cast" years, and can I use them for reporting?

Accepted Answer

Now-cast years are estimates for recent years not yet covered by official statistics, extrapolated from aggregate macro data rather than observed. Use them only for high-level national trend analysis, not for sector-level work or formal/regulatory reporting, and treat them with extra caution in turbulent years. For recent reporting years, use the latest observed factors with inflation correction instead (see now-casting vs inflation).

Question 8

How do versions differ, and what changes between them?

Accepted Answer

A version update usually revises the whole time series, because underlying data is corrected back in time. XIO uses three levels (e.g. 3.8.2): major (classification/coverage changes), minor (new year(s), updated source data, balancing changes, full-series update) and bug-fix (mostly the social / environmental accounts; can still shift the monetary tables via re-balancing). Because balancing uses linear-programming algorithms, even small input changes can move some values. Each release ships a changelog and release notes on Zenodo.

Question 9

How do versions differ for commercial use?

Accepted Answer

v3.8.2 (the last CC-BY-SA release) used ~2011 monetary and ~2015 energy data and is meant for research, not company reporting. For any commercial/decision use, use v3.9 or later, which rests on more current and consistent data (~2-year lag). For those versions XIO also offers a derived spend-based factor product: pre-calculated and outlier-removed factors split by Scope 1/2/3, with regional averages and (from v3.11) inflation correction and purchaser-price coefficients, rather than the raw multipliers in the public model. Note: for open research we still recommend the unmodified EXIOBASE data, for transparency and reproducibility.

Question 10

How does EXIOBASE compare with other MRIO databases?

Accepted Answer

Global EE-MRIO databases are built for different purposes. Some prioritise the number of countries, others sector and environmental detail, consistency with official statistics, or ease of use. Each is a different trade-off on resolution, coverage, recency and openness. EXIOBASE is designed for environmental analysis at high sector resolution: 200 products × 163 industries with extra detail on impact-intensive sectors, a broad set of environmental accounts, a peer-reviewed and documented methodology, annual updates, and EU / NACE-based classification. Separately, the spend-based emission factor dataset XIO derives from the model adds outlier removal, smoothing and per-cell data-quality flags, features of the factor product rather than of the raw EE-MRIO model. The best fit depends on your use case, so tell us yours and we will say which applies.

Questions, answered

Current release at a glance

Getting Started

Data Coverage & Structure

Choosing the Right Emission Factor

Data Coverage & Structure

Data Coverage & Structure