Greenest Countries in Europe 2020

• Greenest European Countries
• Summary of Rankings
• Discussion of Categories
• Methodology

Greenest Countries in Europe 2020

The best European countries for environmental sustainability are good at limiting landfill, recycling waste, consuming less energy, using a higher proportion of renewable energy and having clean air, plus they have a substantial proportion of natural land like forests and ample renewable freshwater. With this in mind, our scoring system for 2020 uses relevant publicly-available data to rank each country across several categories. Lower scores indicate higher ranks (i.e., greener countries).

This is our updated study for 2020—you can find our 2019 study here and read about changes we've made to the study for 2020 here.

Summary of Greenest Countries in Europe 2020

Below are 30 countries in Europe ranked from most to least green, with scores across waste, energy, greenhouse gases, air quality, freshwater and natural land. Lower scores are better.

Discussion of Categories

This study includes a wide variety of data in order to characterise each country's burden or benefit to the environment. We categorised this data into six groups: waste, energy, greenhouse gases, air quality, freshwater and natural land. Each score is based on a country's rank across these categories.

Waste & Recycling

Waste puts an incredible strain on the environment, for instance by filling up landfills. Reducing the amount of waste we produce and increasing recycling rates are both critical steps towards reducing the human impact on Earth. In fact, the EU has set waste targets to recycle 65% of municipal waste and reduce landfill to a maximum of 10% of municipal waste by 2030. Municipal waste includes that from households, commerce, offices and public institutions.

Energy

Energy consumption is an important environmental factor because non-renewable energy sources such as fossil fuels (e.g., coal, oil, and natural gas) are more harmful to the environment both to extract and burn. To quantify how energy consumption compares, we ranked countries on both the amount of non-renewable energy consumed per capita and also the percentage of consumed energy sourced from renewable sources such as hydropower, solar, wind, geothermal and biomass energy.

Norway ranked 1st in the energy category with 73% of energy coming from renewable sources and 2.8 tonnes of oil-equivalent non-renewable energy consumed per capita. Iceland ranked 2nd, with a 72% share of energy from renewables and Sweden ranked 3rd.

Greenhouse Gases

Greenhouse gases trap heat in the atmosphere and contribute to global warming, which is responsible for rising temperatures and more extreme weather conditions around the globe. Extreme weather includes severe storms and associated flooding in some areas to extended droughts in others; or record-breaking heat waves and cold streaks across the globe. Greenhouse gases include those from international aviation. For interest, we include sub-data for gas emissions from agriculture and cows.

Sweden, Malta, Croatia and Romania ranked as the countries with the lowest levels of greenhouse emissions in our study. Sweden releases just 5.4 tons of greenhouse gases per capita a year. In contrast, Luxembourg is the worst country according to this metric and is responsible for 20.3 tons of greenhouse gases per capita annually.

Air Quality

The most damaging air pollution particles are PM2.5 (particles less than 2.5 micrometers in diameter) because they can penetrate deeply into the lungs when we breathe due to their small size. A study in the US showed that PM2.5 increased the rate of death by chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (+3.3%) and heart disease (+2.1%). More locally, a study in Estonia showed that PM2.5 decreased life expectancy by nearly 8 months. Common sources of PM2.5 are traffic and local heating.

Finland, Iceland and Sweden tied for 1st place in the air quality category, with total concentrations of fine particulate matter (PM2.5) of just 5.9 micrograms per cubic meter. Poland has the worst air quality, with 20.5 micrograms per cubic meter—more than 3X as much as Finland, Iceland and Sweden.

Freshwater

Water is a vital yet strained resource, with need already outstripping demand in many parts of the world. Not only is water essential for life, but it is also necessary for agriculture, industry and the running of households. Renewable internal freshwater is defined as the total volume of river runoff and groundwater in a country, in natural conditions, exclusively by precipitation into a territory.

According to data from AQUASTAT gathered via the World Bank, Iceland is the clear winner in the freshwater category, with 519 thousand cubic metres of renewable internal freshwater resources per capital. Second place in the freshwater category went to Norway (74.4) and third place to Finland (19.6). Cyprus (0.7), the Netherlands (0.7), Hungary (0.6) and Malta (0.1) have the least renewable freshwater resources per capita.

Land

Forests and other natural areas are critical to the environmental health of the planet. Besides providing habitats for animals, forests absorb and store CO2, help prevent flooding during heavy rainfall, reduce soil erosion and preserve groundwater supplies. In contrast, cropland and urban areas can put a strain on the environment, through higher temperatures, rainwater runoff problems, poor quality air, displacing wildlife and other environmental perils. We ranked the countries based on the percentage of land in each country that is natural—that is, neither cropland nor artificial surfaces (including urban and associated areas).

Iceland ranked 1st in the land category overall, with only 0.05% of the land surface taken up by artificial surfaces and 1.2% by crops. Norway ranked a close 2nd, and Sweden 3rd.

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Methodology

We focused our data collection on general environmental factors, such as air quality, freshwater abundance, greenhouse gas emissions per capita, energy consumption per capita, share of energy from renewable sources, waste generation per capita, recycling rates and share of natural land. We gathered the data from several reputable sources including Eurostat, the European Environmental Agency, the World Health Organization and the World Bank.

Using these data sets, we first ranked the 30 European countries for which we could find data based on each metric and calculated an average ranking for each category. In categories where multiple factors were at play, we calculated the percentage difference for each country from the average value for a metric, then averaged these differences and ranked the countries accordingly.

The composite score is an equally weighted average of each category's score. A lower score indicates a better rank.

Waste data incorporated both the amount of municipal waste generated per capita and the percentage of municipal waste that is recycled to give a picture of a country's waste production and its efforts to reduce landfill waste through recycling.

Energy data includes the amount of nonrenewable energy consumed (i.e., thousand tonnes of oil equivalent) per capita, plus the share of energy consumed that comes from renewable sources.

Greenhouse Gases data are from the European Environment Agency (EEA), accessed via Europa.eu, to show the per capita amount of harmful greenhouse gases such as CO2 that are contributed to the atmosphere, exacerbating global warming.

Air Quality data shows the concentration of fine particulate matter in the air that is less than 2.5 micrometers in diameter, to give an indication of the cleanliness of the air we breathe.

Freshwater data includes the amount of renewable internal freshwater resources per capita (i.e., precipitation that replenishes rivers and groundwater) to give an idea of long-term access to this strained resource.

Land data includes the proportion of natural habitat in each country—that is, land that is neither artificial nor cropland, because forests and other natural areas are important for CO2 reduction and the water cycle, to give a picture of the percentage of natural land in a country.

Note: we made a few changes to our study of Greenest Countries in Europe from 2019:

Changes for 2020

Sources

Waste

Energy

Greenhouse Gases

Air Quality

Freshwater

Land