Delivering on the European Green Deal A Private Sector Perspective 2025

According to a recent analysis, in 2024 European G2000 companies outperformed their global peers, but only 21% of them are on track to achieve net zero by 2050. 47% are off-track but are reducing emissions, while the remaining 32% are still increasing their emissions.26 To deliver on the emission reduction targets, it is critical to understand the importance of hard-to-abate sectors. Half of the Scope 1 and 2 emissions of companies analysed for this report are attributable to just three industry sub-sectors: electric services (20%), petroleum refining (17%) and steel (13%).27 The situation is similar for Scope 3 emissions, where three sub-sectors contribute to over half of emissions: petroleum refining (33%), automotive (11%) and metal mining (8%).28 Any improvement in these would translate to substantial overall emission reductions. Sectoral distribution of cumulative Scope 1 and 2 emissions between 2019 and 2023 FIGURE 4 Manufacturing Transport and public utilities Mining Other Industry sector:Electric services 30% 57% 5%8%17% Petroleum refining13%Steel works 20% Note: Sample size: N = 351. Source: Accenture analysis; ESG Book. Reducing emissions requires pulling several levers and energy efficiency is particularly important. In 2019, 25% of analysed European companies set energy efficiency targets and by 2022 this reached 31%, significantly lower than the share of companies with emission reduction targets.29 Manufacturing, transport and public utilities have the highest rate of energy efficiency target setting, covering 35% of companies in 2022. On the opposite end, the service sector covered 17% in the same year.30 There is an underlying rationale for this, as energy accounts for a notable share of operating expenses in manufacturing and transport, and efficiency improvements are directly linked to lowering costs. The service sector has lower emissions to begin with (accounting for 0.1% of analysed companies’ Scope 1 and 2 emissions)31 and therefore has less to gain from investing early in energy efficiency measures. The next lever that directly reduces emissions is renewable energy use. Overall, 43% of analysed European companies had renewable energy targets in 2022, an increase of 19 percentage points since 1.2 Energy use and efficiency Delivering on the European Green Deal: A Private Sector Perspective 9