Environmentally motivated subsidies 2025
Reduced aid lowers environmental motivated subsidies in 2025
Statistical news from Statistics Sweden 2026-06-11 8.00
Environmentally motivated subsidies decreased in 2025 compared to 2024. In 2025, these subsidies amounted to SEK 20.7 billion, representing a 7.5 percent decrease from 2024. The GDP share of environmental subsidies also declined to 0.3 percent.
Environmentally motivated subsidies, covering transactions contributing to reduced climate and other environmental impacts as well as more efficient natural resource use, amounted to 20.7 billion SEK in 2025. This is a decrease by 1.7 billion SEK compared to 2024. Subsidies cover four areas, emission-reducing subsidies, energy-related subsidies, environmentally related aid and international cooperation, and resource-related subsidies.
- The decrease in 2025 was mainly due to decreased transactions for environmental aid and international corporation, from 4.8 to 2.9 billion SEK, says Andreas Poldahl, analyst at Statistics Sweden.
Environmental aid represents the largest share of the reductions, totaling approximately SEK 1.8 billion. This indicates a political shift in priorities.
Environmental subsidies fall – biggest drops in environmental aid and international cooperation
The largest environmental subsidy in emission-reducing subsidies is Supports in the climate area which amounted to 4.8 billion SEK in 2025, while bonus for low emission vehicles which had previously been the largest emissions-reducing subsidy, was phased out.
The resource-related subsidies amounted to 9.5 billion SEK. Environmental improvement measures in agriculture constituted to the largest part of the resource-related subsidies. These include environmental benefits to farmers through the Swedish rural development program, e.g., biodiversity measures in the farmed landscape and environmentally friendly agriculture which are financed by the European Union.
Environmental subsidies go primarily to companies
Subsidies, i.e. payments for investment and consumption, can be allocated to different stakeholders both domestically and internationally. Swedish companies, non-profit institutions, households, and other public authorities in Sweden accounted for about 88 percent of the total in 2025. The remainder was allocated to international organisations and aid. Subsidies allocated to domestic use increased by 0.5 percent, to approximately SEK 18.3 billion in 2025. Subsidies to companies increased by 13 percent in 2025 compared with 2024.
Cuts for households, non profits and international organisations
Changes
In the compilation of statistics for the year 2025, a few newly introduced environmentally motivated subsidies have been incorporated. Among these are investment grants aimed at facilitating the modal shift of freight transport to rail and maritime transport. The investment grant for the modal shift of freight transport to rail and maritime transport constitutes a Swedish state aid measure established through Regulation SFS 2024:685. The measure is directed at companies participating in intermodal transport chains and is intended to promote the transfer of freight from road transport to more climate‑friendly modes such as rail and maritime transport.
Additional environmental subsidies introduced in 2025 include “Support measures for fisheries and aquaculture”, “Measures to reduce nitrogen emissions to air within the agricultural sector”, and “Management of certain hazardous waste.”
Revisions
The time series has been revised backwards because some items were previously omitted. For more information, see the quality report (available only in Swedish) on Statistics Sweden’s website under Environmental accounts (scb.se), under “Tables and graphs”.
Definitions and explanations
Environmentally motivated subsidies are defined in accordance with the United Nations statistical standard SEEA Central Framework, which also forms the basis for Eurostat’s methodology for environmental accounts. Sweden therefore adheres to both the SEEA standard and Eurostat’s harmonised guidelines in the production of these statistics. The definition that applies in Statistics Sweden’s environmental accounts is informed by the subsidy objective. Therefore, the definition used in the environmental accounts is broader than the one used in the national accounts, as the environmental accounts also include capital and current transfers and social benefits in kind.
To identify environmentally motivated subsidies, the Budget Bills for the respective years have been used as the primary source. The statistics are based on the Swedish Agency for Public Management’s (Statskontoret) calculations of the central government budget outcome, in which transactions are traced back to the appropriations from which they originate. This provides a clear picture of how government resources are allocated and prioritised; see the data source pivot tables.
Statistics Sweden has published statistics on environmentally motivated subsidies since 2000.
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