For years the debate about whether an economy can grow while its emissions fall was conducted with projections. The cited release presents early estimates spanning a decade. In June 2026 Eurostat reported that greenhouse gas emissions from the EU economy in 2025 totalled 3.3 billion tonnes of CO2 equivalent, 17.2 percent below 2015. Over the same ten years EU GDP grew by 17.5 percent.
Two lines crossing, in opposite directions, at almost exactly the same speed.
The part under the headline
| Sector | Change in emissions, 2015 to 2025 |
|---|---|
| Energy | -45.3% |
| Mining and quarrying | -33.3% |
| Manufacturing | -16.0% |
| Households | -14.7% |
| Services | -11.9% |
| Agriculture, forestry and fishing | -5.9% |
| Water supply and waste management | -2.6% |
| Transportation and storage | +10.9% |
| Construction | +11.4% |
Nearly half the total reduction comes from one sector cleaning up its own generation. That is the grid story again, and it flows downhill into everyone else's Scope 2.
Two sectors went up
Transport and construction both grew their emissions over the decade. That is not a footnote for the companies reading this, because it is where a great many small European businesses actually sit, and it is where a customer's Scope 3 questions land hardest.
If you are a haulier, a builder, an installer or a supplier to one of them, the sector average is working against you rather than for you. The flip side is that a genuine reduction in those sectors is far more interesting to a customer than a comparable reduction in an office-based service business, most of which arrived by itself.
What to take from it
Two things. First, decoupling is no longer a theory to argue about in a report's introduction, and you can cite it in one sentence with a source. Second, the honest framing of your own numbers is comparative: not "our emissions fell", but "our emissions fell faster than our sector's, and here is the part we did on purpose".
Joost Thissen
