The EU’s decision to roll back some of the corporate sustainability reporting rules was a welcome move for European companies calling for overregulation.
Policymakers argue they are sticking to ambitious climate targets established under the EU green trade. However, there is concern about the block’s efforts to ease regulatory pressure on businesses by mitigating green policies, and even withdrawing from transparent reporting.
Europe has made a major leap in the green energy transition over the past few years. But how businesses in the region respond to the latest EU changes in reporting and how they say the broader shift in sentiment following President Donald Trump’s drive to deregulation and pullbacks on green policies.
The fifth edition of European Climate Leaders – compiled by the Financial Times in collaboration with data provider Statista – aims to highlight European companies reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions.
This list focuses primarily on companies that have achieved the largest reductions in range 1 and 2 GHG emission strength over five years (2018-23 in this edition).
The emissions of scopes 1 and 2 – “core emissions” in the table – come from the company’s own operations and the energy it uses, respectively. Emission strength is defined as emissions in Range 1 and Scope 2 and is comparable per million euros per million euros of revenue.
Other factors are considered, such as the transparency of scope 3 emissions. This comes from the company’s supply chain and typically accounts for a large portion of the company’s carbon emissions. It also takes into account corporate advances in reducing absolute emissions and collaboration with sustainability evaluators such as CDP and Science-Based Target Initiatives (SBTI).
These additional factors are assigned a score combined with a reduction in emission strength numbers to generate the overall total for each company. For more information about the methodology, please visit the panel at the end of this article and the Statista website.
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The highest scored company this year is Tele2, a Swedish telecommunications company with 87.5 points. The UK Asset Manager Intermediate Capital Group and Italian energy company ERG jointly cost 86.2 points each.
As in all past years, financial services accounted for the largest number of companies on the list. This time it was 10%. Next came construction and building materials (8%), transportation, logistics and packaging (7%). The UK had the highest number of companies, with Italy (13%) and Germany (12%).
The availability of corporate emissions data is increasing every year. The 2025 list consists of approximately 2,000 first long lists and 600 companies. To be included, companies must meet the important threshold of reducing core emission strength by more than 3% per year.
The data is readily available and comparable, as the methodology of climate leaders prioritizes emissions in ranges 1 and 2, as it is essential to report them. Although corporate scope 3 emissions are usually much larger, reporting is spontaneous and the lack of standard metrics makes it more difficult to make a definitive comparison. So we focus on transparency rather than absolute numbers.
Even if a company’s absolute emissions reduce emission strength, it can increase. Recognizing this, companies’ progress in reducing absolute emissions has been factored into scoring, excluding companies that have increased their absolute emissions by more than 30% this year.
Absolute emissions are listed as negative numbers in the Total Core Emission Reduction column.
The methodology of this annual list has undergone continuous review as emission data reporting evolves.
The company’s own carbon accounting, whether cited in the company’s report or submitted to the CDP, may be inconsistent or insignificant details. To mitigate this risk, the figures reported by the largest emission cutters in 2018 and 2023 are being scrutinized by Greenwatch, a Dublin University-based sustainability research team. That discovery was added to the table as a footnote.
The editor reserved the right to exclude businesses such as deforestation, which broader environmental records such as non-GHG pollution. Energy companies leaning into new fossil fuel reserves and businesses that were denounced by regulators for greenwashing have fallen into this category, as well as banks that are increasing fossil fuel funding.
A print and online report on European climate leaders will be published on May 22, with a series of articles
(1) Combined Annual Reduction Rate (CARR) adjusted by revenue growth from 2018 to 2023, based on the total emissions for Scopes 1 and 2;
(2) Calculated in 2023
(3) Absolute changes in GHG emissions from 2018 to 2023. Positive values reflect reductions in emissions, while negative values increase. However, all the companies on the list have reduced their emissions strength.
(4) Scope 3 refers to indirect emissions. This is very different as it can be reported for some or all of the 15 categories. This is why there are absolute numbers left here.
(5) CDP is a non-profit organization that evaluates the extent to which businesses and other organizations report and reduce environmental impacts.
(6) SBTI is a partnership between CDP, the United Nations Global Compact, The World Resources Institute, and WWF, which helps businesses set goals to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
Greenwatch review
(a) The company’s core emissions strength performance may have been different if the emissions in ranges 1 and 2 mentioned in the annual report were in perfect agreement with the figures submitted to the CDP, and if the emissions in scope 2 were provided with more comprehensive disclosure regarding the use of renewable energy products.
(b) If the emissions for scopes 1 and 2 listed in the annual report were exactly in line with the figures submitted to the CDP, the company’s core emission strength performance could have been different.
(c) The company’s core emission strength performance may have been different if the Range 2 emissions listed in the Annual Report were in perfect agreement with the figures submitted to the CDP, and provided more comprehensive disclosure regarding the use of renewable energy products to offset scope 2 emissions.
(d) If the Scope 2 emissions listed in the Annual Report were in perfect agreement with the figures submitted to the CDP, the company’s core emission strength performance could have been different.
(e) The company’s core emission strength performance could have been different if additional information had been disclosed regarding the use of renewable energy products to offset Scope 2 emissions.
(f) GreenWatch, who reviewed this entry, has no significant comments on the company’s core emission strength performance. To make comparisons easier, I used the same Greenwatch footnote system as last year. Companies will not fall into categories this year (d) and (f)
Methodology
European Climate Leader 2025 is a list of 600 European companies that have achieved the largest reduction in greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions intensity and have made climate-related commitments. These two factors are combined to create an overall score for each company.
For these first, the compiler looked for businesses with the lowest GHG emission intensity between 2018 and 2023. Emission strength is defined as the co-equivalent tonnes and scope 2 emissions per million euros of revenue. The 2018 and 2023 figures were used to calculate the combined annual reduction rate, expressed as the percentage that contributed to 80% of the overall score.
In the second case, the compiler assigned the following score: Transparency and scope of Scope 3 emissions report. Reducing emissions in absolute ranges 1 and 2. A commitment to net zero and collaboration with CDP and SBTI. This accounted for 20% of the overall score.
Companies that have been debated well enough to increase absolute emissions by more than 30% and undermine the claim that companies that broaden their GHG-related or environmental records are “climate leaders” have been removed from the list.
All European companies, defined as headquartered in one of the 33 European countries, were considered in 2023 with a minimum revenue of 40 million euros. In non-European countries, the threshold was the same currency value as in 31/12/2023.
With the September 2024 invitation to enter, future participants invited them to fill out their revenue over the same period (or, in the case of banks and insurance companies, gross revenue). The research and analysis phase was carried out between October 2024 and February 2025
Statista also conducted independent research, scrutinising data from around 2,000 companies and invited them to register possible candidates. For companies with CDP ratings, only companies with at least a B- score were considered. Companies that did not use CDP were still qualified, but for companies that issued joint equivalents of over 2 million tonnes each year, a CDP score of at least an A- was required.
The editor also reserved the right to exclude businesses if the broader environmental records were fully discussed to claim that they were “climate leaders” beyond the reported emissions of ranges 1 and 2.
We contacted all companies where relevant data was found (both registered companies and independently identified companies) so that we could view the data. Of these, 600 with the most reduced emission strength appeared on the final list of European Climate Leaders 2025.
Disclaimer
Although extensive research has been conducted, some companies have not published the numbers and did not participate, making the list not claim to be complete. What is listed is positive perceptions based on the criteria outlined in the methodology. The quality of companies not listed is not contested.
