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The EU’s decision to roll back some of its corporate sustainability reporting rules will have been a welcome move for European companies that have complained of overregulation.
Policymakers insist they are sticking to ambitious climate goals established under the EU’s Green Deal. Yet there are fears that the bloc’s efforts to ease the regulatory pressure on businesses by watering down green policies risks causing confusion — and even a retreat from transparent reporting.
Europe has made significant leaps forward in the green energy transition in the past few years. But how companies in the region respond to the latest EU changes on reporting, and to the broader shift in sentiment following US President Donald Trump’s deregulation drive and pullback on green policies, will be telling.
The fifth edition of Europe’s Climate Leaders — compiled by the Financial Times in partnership with data provider Statista — aims to highlight European companies that are making progress in cutting greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions.
The list focuses primarily on businesses that have achieved the greatest reduction in their Scope 1 and 2 GHG emissions intensity over a five-year period (2018-23 for this edition).
Scope 1 and 2 emissions — “core emissions” in the table — come respectively from a company’s own operations and from the energy it uses. Emissions intensity is defined as Scope 1 and Scope 2 emissions, in tonnes of CO₂-equivalent, per €1mn in revenue.
Other factors are considered, such as transparency on Scope 3 emissions, which arise from a company’s supply chain and typically make up the bulk of corporate carbon emissions. Companies’ progress in reducing absolute emissions, and their collaboration with sustainability assessors, such as CDP and the Science Based Targets initiative (SBTi), are also taken into account.
These additional factors are assigned a score, which is combined with the reduction in emissions intensity figure, to produce an overall total for each company. Further details of the methodology can be found in the panel at the end of this article and on Statista’s website.
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This year, the highest-scoring company is Tele2, a Swedish telecommunications company, with 87.5 points. UK asset manager Intermediate Capital Group and Italian energy company ERG are joint second, with 86.2 points each.
As in all previous years, financial services accounted for the greatest number of companies in the list, this time 10 per cent of them. Next came construction and building materials (8 per cent), then transport, logistics, and packaging (7 per cent). The UK was home to the greatest number of companies — 22 per cent — followed by Italy (13 per cent) and Germany (12 per cent).
The availability of corporate emissions data has increased every year. The 2025 list comprises 600 companies, from an initial longlist of about 2,000. To be included, companies must meet a key threshold of reducing their core emissions intensity by more than 3 per cent a year.
The Climate Leaders methodology prioritises Scope 1 and 2 emissions because it is mandatory to report these, so data is both readily available and comparable. Companies’ Scope 3 emissions are typically far greater but, because reporting remains voluntary and there is no standard metric, definitive comparisons are harder to make — hence the focus on transparency instead of absolute numbers.
It is possible for a company’s absolute emissions to increase even as it reduces its emissions intensity. In recognition of this, companies’ progress in cutting absolute emissions has been factored into the scoring, and this year we excluded any companies that have increased their absolute emissions by more than 30 per cent.
Absolute emissions are represented in the list by negative figures in the “total reduction of core emissions” column.
The methodology for this annual list is under continuous review as the reporting of emissions data evolves.
Sometimes, companies’ own carbon accounting, whether cited in corporate reports or submitted to CDP, may be inconsistent or lack key details. To mitigate this risk, the figures reported for 2018 and 2023 by the biggest emissions cutters, in terms of both intensity and absolute emissions, have also been scrutinised by GreenWatch, a sustainability research team based at University College Dublin. Its findings have been added to the table as footnotes.
The editors reserved the right to exclude companies if their broader environmental record — on non-GHG pollution, for example, or deforestation — was sufficiently disputed to undermine any claim to be a “climate leader”. Energy companies prospecting for new fossil fuel reserves and businesses censured by regulators for greenwashing fell into this category, as did banks increasing their financing of fossil fuels.
A print and online report on Europe’s Climate Leaders will be published on May 22, featuring a series of articles
[1] Compound annual reduction rate (CARR) based on the sum of Scope 1 and 2 emissions and adjusted by revenue growth between 2018-2023.
[2] Calculated for 2023
[3] Absolute change in GHG emissions between 2018 and 2023. Positive values reflect a reduction in emissions, negative values an increase. All the companies on the list have, however, cut their emissions intensity.
[4] Scope 3 refers to indirect emissions, which can be reported for some or all of 15 categories and thus vary enormously. This is why absolute figures are left out here.
[5] CDP is a non-profit organisation that assesses how well companies and other bodies report on and reduce their environmental impact.
[6] SBTi is a partnership between CDP, the UN Global Compact, the World Resources Institute and WWF and helps companies set targets for reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
GreenWatch assessment
[a] This company’s core emissions intensity performance might have been different if the Scope 1 and 2 emissions detailed in its annual report were fully consistent with the figures it submitted to CDP, and if it had provided more comprehensive disclosures on the use of renewable energy products to offset Scope 2 emissions.
[b] This company’s core emissions intensity performance might have been different if the Scope 1 and 2 emissions detailed in its annual report were fully consistent with the figures it submitted to CDP.
[c] This company’s core emissions intensity performance might have been different if the Scope 2 emissions detailed in its annual report were fully consistent with the figures it submitted to CDP, and if it had provided more comprehensive disclosures on the use of renewable energy products to offset Scope 2 emissions.
[d] This company’s core emissions intensity performance might have been different if the Scope 2 emissions detailed in its annual report were fully consistent with the figures it submitted to CDP.
[e] This company’s core emissions intensity performance might have been different if additional information about the use of renewable energy products to offset Scope 2 emissions had been disclosed.
[f] Having reviewed this entry, GreenWatch does not have a material comment on this company’s core emissions intensity performance. To make comparison easier, we have used the same GreenWatch footnote system as last year; this year no companies fall into categories [d] and [f]
Methodology
Europe’s Climate Leaders 2025 is a list of 600 European companies that have achieved the greatest reduction in their greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions intensity and made further climate-related commitments. These two factors are combined to produce an overall score for each company.
For the first of these, the compilers looked for the businesses whose GHG emissions intensity fell the most between 2018 and 2023. Emissions intensity is defined as tonnes of Scope 1 and Scope 2 emissions of CO₂-equivalent per €1mn in revenue. The 2018 and 2023 figures were used to calculate the compound annual rate of reduction, expressed as a percentage, which contributed 80 per cent of the overall score.
For the second, the compilers assigned a score based on: transparency and extent of Scope 3 emissions reporting; reduction in absolute Scope 1 and 2 emissions; and commitment to net zero and collaboration with CDP and SBTi. This accounted for 20 per cent of the overall score.
Companies that increased their absolute emissions by more than 30 per cent and companies whose broader GHG-related or environmental record is sufficiently disputed to undermine any claim to be a “climate leader” were excluded from the list.
All European companies — defined as having headquarters in one of 33 European countries — with a minimum revenue of €40mn in 2023 were eligible for consideration. For non-euro countries, the currency value equivalent as of 31/12/2023 was the threshold.
A call for entries in September 2024 invited prospective participants to complete a short questionnaire about their GHG emissions between 2018 and 2023, and their revenue over the same period (or, for banks and insurance companies, total income). The research and the analysis phase ran from October 2024 to February 2025
Statista also conducted independent research, scrutinising data from about 2,000 companies and inviting possible candidates to register. For businesses with a rating from CDP, only those with a score of at least B- were considered. Companies that do not work with CDP were still eligible, but for any company annually emitting more than 2mn tonnes of CO₂-equivalent, a CDP score of at least A- was mandatory.
The editors also reserved the right to exclude companies if their broader environmental records, beyond reported Scope 1 and 2 emissions, were sufficiently disputed to undermine any claim to be a “climate leader”.
All companies for which relevant data was found — both those that registered and those independently identified — were contacted so that they could review the data. Of those, the 600 with the greatest reduction in emissions intensity have made it into the final list of European Climate Leaders 2025. Fuller information about the methodology is available from Statista.
Disclaimer
Although extensive research was carried out, the list does not claim to be complete, as some companies did not publish their figures or did not participate. A mention in the list is a positive recognition based on the criteria outlined in the methodology. The quality of companies not included in the list is not disputed.