Negative growth in Europe would make very little difference to the amount of investment needed for the ecological transition, and would make it much more difficult to finance this investment

The additional investment needed to achieve the energy transition, improve water management and preserve biodiversity amounts to around 3.5 percentage points of GDP over more than 20 years, including 2.5 pp of GDP for the energy transition alone. The amount of additional investment required would be only marginally reduced if Europe were to adopt a negative growth strategy. Even if the level of GDP were reduced, it would still be necessary to invest almost as much to decarbonise industry and transport, replace fossil fuels with renewable energy, carry out the thermal renovation of buildings and housing, and better manage water resources and maintain biodiversity. Moreover, a reduction in the level of GDP would automatically lead to an increase in spending on healthcare and education as a proportion of GDP, and would therefore reduce the savings available to finance the new investments needed. Negative growth cannot solve the problem of decarbonising the economy.