Over €1.2 trillion has been invested into sustainable activities across the European Union since 2021, new data from the European Commission has revealed.
The Commission said that investment in activities aligned with the EU Taxonomy reached €323.8 billion in 2025, bringing the cumulative reported value of taxonomy-aligned investments since 2021 to €1.224 trillion.
The EU Taxonomy is a ‘voluntary market transparency tool that helps companies and investors identify environmentally sustainable economic activities to make sustainable investment decisions’, the Commission noted. Some 242 activities spanning 16 economic sectors are included.
Capital expenditure
As the Commission noted, last year, reporting companies allocated an average of 28.58% of their capital expenditure to activities aligned with the EU Taxonomy, up from 25.29% in 2024 and 24.43% in 2023.
The biggest investments were made in the utilities sector (51.8%), followed by the manufacturing (26.8%) and transportation and storage sectors (10.2%), the data showed.
On a country-by-country basis, meanwhile, the Netherlands recorded the highest level of taxonomy-aligned investment relative to total corporate investment in the EU, at 20.2%, followed by Denmark (20%), Germany (18.6%) and Spain (15.58%).
Overall, EU Taxonomy-aligned turnover totalled €913 billion last year, equivalent to 14.41% of the total turnover of reporting companies.
‘The figures highlight continued growth in the use of the EU’s sustainable finance framework,’ the Commission noted. ‘The sustainable finance framework links economic growth with decarbonisation by supporting the roll-out of clean technologies and infrastructure, especially in the energy sector. They strengthen the EU’s strategic autonomy and energy security by channelling investments into domestic renewable energy, electrification, and other clean technologies, thus reducing reliance on imported fossil fuels.’
Green Asset Ratio
Elsewhere, the Commission also reported that the average average taxonomy-aligned Green Asset Ratio (GAR) for banks rose to 5.68% in 2025, compared with 2.8% in 2024, while the European green bond market has also expanded since the European Green Bond Regulation came into effect in December 2024.
As of the end of 2025, issuance reached €21 billion, followed by €39 billion in the current year-to-date, meaning that total issuance since the standard began applying stood at around €60 billion as of 7 October. Read more here.
