Eurostat, the statistical office of the European Union

E2: Environmental statistics and accounts; sustainable development

The indicator is part of the EU Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) indicator set. It is used to monitor progress towards  Goal 13 on climate action; which is embedded in the European Commission’s Priorities under the European Green Deal. SDG 13 seeks to implement the commitment to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change for achieving a climate neutral world by mid-century to limit global warming to well below 2°C and aiming at 1.5°C (compared to pre-industrial times). It also aims to strengthen countries’ resilience and adaptive capacity to climate-related natural hazards and the resulting disasters.

As part of the transition towards climate neutrality and climate resilience, the EU is endeavouring to redirect public and private investments to areas where they will support this objective. For this reason, the EU has adopted the EU taxonomy as a classification system for sustainable economic activities and a European green bond standard as a voluntary ‘gold’ standard for the green bond market. At EU level, climate change mitigation and adaptation has been integrated into all major spending programmes and the EU has also committed to support international climate action.

This indicator is a headline indicator for monitoring progress towards meeting targets of the Eighth Environment Action Programme (8th EAP).

Green bonds are loans provided by an investor to a borrower which are used to fund projects or activities that promote climate change mitigation or adaptation or other environmental objectives. While the green bond definition can vary, this indicator includes bonds that are aligned with the four core components of the International Capital Market Association (ICMA) green bond principles or are certified by the Climate Bond Initiative (CBI). Issuers include supranational issuers such as the EU or the EIB, subnational issuers such as municipalities or agencies, corporates such as a company or financial corporation, and sovereign bond issuers which are national governments.

Percentage (%) of total bonds issued.

Calendar year.

Indicator from non-ESS sources. For assessment of accuracy please refer to the original source (see link to external data source and metadata in section “Annexes”).

European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA) and London Stock Exchange Group (LSEG) Data & Analytics

Data provider: European Environment Agency (EEA)

Every year

The indicator is updated annually.

T+2 years

New data points are disseminated within two years after the reference year.

Only EU aggregate

Data on the percentage of green bonds by all issuers is only available for the EU aggregate.

Data for individual Member States is only available for corporates and governments, and only for 2022.

Not Applicable

5 to 10 years

The presented time series starts in 2014.

> 4 data points

Length of comparable time series without methodological break is longer than 4 data points.

Analysis of indicator is presented in Eurostat's annual monitoring report on Sustainable development in the EU (progress towards SDGs in the EU context).

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