New European Environment Agency briefing reviews over 130 studies and assesses potential emissions reductions from circular economy approaches.
A European Environment Agency (EEA) briefing published this week has assessed the climate mitigation potential of circular economy strategies, drawing on a review of 131 recent studies and modelling results. The analysis suggests that circular approaches – such as waste reduction, reuse, recycling, material substitution and changes in consumption patterns – could significantly cut greenhouse-gas (GHG) emissions, though estimates vary widely across sectors and measures.
According to the briefing, the average emission reductions estimated across the reviewed literature amount to about a 33% decrease in GHG emissions compared with business-as-usual scenarios, with individual study estimates ranging from as low as 2% to as high as 99%.
Sectors differ in their projected mitigation potential. Waste management shows the highest relative potential for reductions, averaging 52%, followed by construction and buildings at 48%, transport and mobility at 28%, industry at 26% and agriculture at 24%. The report notes that these figures reflect relative savings compared with current practices and should be interpreted cautiously given differences in methodologies and assumptions across studies.
The briefing highlights actions such as smaller living spaces, dietary shifts and shared mobility as individual measures with particularly high reported mitigation potential. It also points to the need for further development of modelling tools and integration of circular economy measures into broader climate scenarios to support policymaking.
The literature review underpinning the briefing found growing research interest in the link between circular economy and climate change, with an increasing number of publications over recent years and coverage spanning developed countries, emerging economies and some global analyses.
Despite the positive indications, the EEA briefing stresses that methodological variations among studies and disparities in estimated potentials make it difficult to pin down a precise figure for achievable emissions reductions. It underscores the importance of transparent analytical methods and combined upstream and downstream measures to maximise the climate benefits of circular strategies.
