The study comes from Plan4Climate, a European project run by Climate Action Network Europe (CAN Europe). It is carried out by 14 environmental NGOs from 13 European countries. It was published on 13 October. The authors say it counts the benefits of climate action that usually go missing in debates that focus on the cost of the transition. The authors are advocacy groups, and the figures come from their own modelling. Here are the numbers that matter.
34,000 lives
This is the number of lives the energy transition could save across Europe by 2030, according to the study. The report’s health benefits also include fewer working days lost to illness, according to the Portuguese group Zero, one of the report’s partners.
€826 billion a year
This is the yearly value of the benefits by 2030. Zero’s statement lists lower energy spending, new jobs, better health and fewer sick days among them. The report adds the avoided global climate damage on top of that total.
€8.5 billion
This is the share the study assigns to Portugal alone. Portuguese outlets led with it, and the country is one of the 13 in the project.
€340 billion
According to the report, the EU spent about €340 billion on fossil fuel imports in 2025. The authors set this against the cost of continued dependence on fossil fuels.
€344 billion
This is the EU’s climate investment gap in the same year. The shortfall is almost exactly the size of the import bill, which looks like a deliberate comparison by the authors.
Nearly €2 trillion by 2050
With energy-saving measures, the annual €826 billion could rise to almost €2 trillion by 2050. Most of the growth in that estimate depends on efficiency policy, not on building more generation.
Taken together, the figures present the transition as a household matter more than an environmental one. The report says this ties climate action directly to families and to fuel poverty. The last figure is the avoided global climate damage, which the study puts at €279 per person in 2030 and €1,282 per person in 2050.
