Eurostat estimates that in 2022, EU countries invested about €69 billion into assets essential to provide environmental protection (EP) services. These services included wastewater treatment plants, vehicles to transport waste, acquisitions of land to create a natural reserve, or cleaner equipment for producing with less polluting emissions.
About €44 billion (65% of total environmental protection investments) was spent by corporations, both the 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, which purchase technologies and equipment reducing the environmental pressures arising from their production process (e.g. equipment reducing their air emissions). The general government and non-profit sector accounted for the remaining share (35%).
The share of environmental protection investments in total investments was about 2.5% in 2022. More specifically, the share of environmental protection investments in total investments of corporations was 2.0% and of the general government was 4.8%.
The largest amount of investments was related to wastewater and waste management services. In 2022, they accounted for 44.0% and 25.7% of the total investments for environmental protection, respectively, while 10.5% went to air protection, 7.8% to protection against radiation, to environmental R&D and other environmental protection activities, including general environmental administration and education, 6.0% to soil and groundwater protection, 4.4% to biodiversity and landscape protection, and the remaining 1.6% to noise reduction.
