Report

Sustainable profits!

This report assesses the environmental gains of the Netherlands’ Green Investments scheme, under which investors in so-called ‘green funds’ are eligible for a 2.5% tax break. In collaboration with KPMG Milieu, CE has developed a method with which to calculate these gains, subsequently expressing them in monetary terms, based on standing environmental policy and the government’s stated intention to elaborate such policy on the basis of cost-effectiveness. These calculations of both environmental and economic gains show that the projects invested in by the green funds yielded environmental ‘profits’ of 50 million euro, at an effective cost of 30 million euro.

The Green Investments scheme also increases social awareness among banking staff and executives, institutional and other investors and entrepreneurs, and encourages development of new production technologies. In the main, advisory document, available from KPMG Milieu, the results of the study are presented together with a brief introduction to the methodology used. This background report discusses the methodology in greater depth and elaborates on the results in more detail. The study was carried out for the Ministry of the Environment (VROM) and the Dutch Banking Association (Nederlandse Vereniging van Banken).

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