water treatment plant viewed from above

Eurostat estimates that in 2024, EU countries invested about €76 billion in assets essential for providing environmental protection services. These services include wastewater treatment plants, vehicles for transporting waste, acquisitions of land to create natural reserves, and cleaner equipment for production. 

Almost €47 billion (61.4% of total environmental protection investments) was spent by corporations on purchasing technologies and equipment to reduce environmental pressures from their production processes (for example, equipment to reduce air emissions). The general government and the non-profit sector accounted for the remaining 38.6% of investments.

EU investments for environmental protection in 2024 (€ billion, by environmental domains). Bar chart. Link to full dataset below.

Source datasets: env_ac_epigg1, env_ac_epissp1, env_ac_epiap1, nasa_10_nf_tr

Environmental protection investments represented 2.0% of total investments in 2024. 

Most investments went into wastewater and waste management services: 38.2% and 24.8% of the total investments in environmental protection, respectively. Protection against radiation, R&D and other environmental protection activities accounted for 14.0% and air and climate protection for 11.2%. Soil and groundwater protection made up 5.6%, biodiversity and landscape protection 5.2%, and noise reduction accounted for the remaining 1.0%.

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Methodological notes

  • Corporations refer to specialist providers of environmental protection services (e.g. private companies dealing with waste collection and processing and with sewerage) and corporations other than specialist producers that do not sell environmental services on the market but which undertake environmental protection activities in-house and for own use. 
  • Environmental domains are defined according to the classification of environmental protection activities (CEPA). CEPA is a recognised international standard included in the family of international economic and social classifications. 
  • With these estimates, EU aggregates from 2014 onwards were revised.
  • Statistics in this article are compiled according to the UN System of Environmental-Economic Accounting (SEEA).

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