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Drop in carbon emissions from European bank loans

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Euro area banks have been financing fewer and fewer greenhouse gas emissions through their loans to European firms in recent years, as revealed by new figures from De Nederlandsche Bank (DNB) and the European Central Bank (ECB). 

Published: 02 December 2025

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In 2018, European banks were still financing 165 million tonnes of carbon emissions. By 2023 (the most recent figures) this had dropped to 116 million tonnes, a decrease of 29%.

Source: DNB statistics

At De Nederlandsche Bank, we independently compile statistics on the Dutch financial sector and economy. This article is based on these statistics. More information on our statistics and all dashboards can be found on our Statistics homepage.

Dutch banks financed some 5.6 million tonnes of carbon emissions with their loans to European firms in 2018, dropping to 3.0 million tonnes in 2023 (-47%).

This put the Netherlands in 9th place in the euro area (in 2023) in terms of bank-financed emissions, while the size of the Dutch banking sector is smaller only than that of Germany, France, Spain and Italy. This comparatively low level of financed carbon emissions relative to the size of the national banking sector is due to the fact that Dutch banks tend to lend to lower-emission sectors, such as the services sector.

What are financed emissions?

Financed emissions link a firm’s emissions to its level of bank financing. For example, if a firm receives a loan of €100,000 on a balance sheet total of €1 million, ten per cent of the firm’s emissions can be attributed to the lending bank. In this example, if the firm emits 10 tonnes of CO₂, the lending bank 'finances' one tonne of carbon emissions.

Mortgages and securities portfolios are not included in these figures. Euro area corporate loans totalled €4,035 billion in 2023, of which €226 billion came from Dutch banks.

The volume of financed emissions per country is otherwise largely in line with the size of the relevant country’s national economy and banking sector. Germany, France, Spain and Italy make up the top four in the euro area, together accounting for 74% of financed emissions.

Drop in financed emissions due to combination of factors, global emissions increase

The drop in financed emissions among both Dutch and European Banks is due to a combination of factors. Both the decline for all euro area banks and for Dutch banks is largely explained by higher corporate valuations: 12 percentage points for the euro area and 18 percentage points for Dutch banks. This reduces a bank’s contribution to financing a business relative to the value of the business, resulting in proportionally lower financing of emissions (see first box).

Actual emission reductions by European firms largely explain the remainder of the overall decline for euro area banks (16 percentage points). For Dutch banks, however, the decrease can only be ascribed to a limited extent to emission reductions at firms (5 percentage points), and mainly to a shift in banks’ loan portfolios towards companies that emit less CO2 (24 percentage points compared to 3 percentage points for euro area banks).

Although there is a downward trend in emissions in Europe, global carbon emissions are rising, mainly due to economic growth in countries such as China and India. Emissions from firms outside Europe are not included in these results (see second box).

Quality of sustainability statistics

These sustainability statistics are being developed with the European Central Bank and other euro area central banks. The quality of these carbon indicators is not yet comparable to regular statistics published by DNB and the ECB. To make this clear, we have assigned the ‘analytical’ quality label to these statistics. The financed emissions in this news release are based on EU ETS data and data from Eurostat’s Air Emissions Accounts (AEA). These are direct (Scope 1) emissions related to the European economy. Indirect (Scope 2) emissions, emissions in the value chains (Scope 3) and carbon emissions outside Europe are excluded. More recent data (2018-2024) for equities and corporate bonds are available via the links below.

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