Private EU R&D investment in energy remains high as it declines in other areas

15 January 2026

The 2025 EU Industrial R&D Investment Scoreboard tracks and compares the performance of the EU’s leading industrial R&D investors (top 2,000 R&D investors) with their global counterparts, providing valuable insights and data for companies, researchers, and policymakers. The latest conclusions highlight that European’s growth rate of R&D spending is lower than previous years, growing 2.9%. But private spending on energy R&D is one of only two areas (the other, health) where Europe is a leader.

Europe’s growth rate lagging behind global competitors

When analysing the top 2,000 R&D investors (almost 90% of global private R&D funding), R&D investments by EU-headquartered companies grew 2.9% in 2024 to €234 billion, well below the previous year’s 9.3% increase. Excluding 2020, it represents the lowest rate of growth since 2014. Other regions have stronger growth rates, including a 7.8% growth in the U.S., 7.1% in Japan, and 3.9% in China. This shows that while European R&D spending is growing, the pace is slower than its global competitors’. The EU is losing ground in fast-moving digital sectors but it is strong (at least for now) in automotive, energy, and green technologies, maintaining a lead in cumulative international green patent filings. Some commentators label the situation as languishing in the ‘middle technology trap’.

The state of European investment

Within Europe, Germany and France lead in the number of companies and total investment. The number of EU firms among the world’s top 2000 R&D investors increased by 10 (the number of U.S. firms, in contrast, fell by 31). The EU’s share in the total Scoreboard R&D investment is therefore 16.2% – this is ahead of China and only second to the U.S. at 47.1%. Keep in mind that U.S. companies also have significant R&D investments in their Irish-based subsidiaries.

And what about energy ?

There are 25 EU ‘Energy’ companies in the world top 2000 R&D investors database. In 2024, they increased their R&D spend by 19.8%, more than the energy companies of the other world regions: US, China, Japan and Rest of World. The EU also had the second largest R&D spend in energy in absolute terms in 2024, at €7.7 billion, second to China at €8.7 billion.

Concerning just the EU companies in the JRC’s database of the EU’s top 800 R&D investors, the 38 in ‘Energy’ “spent 13.6% more on R&D [in 2024] than in the previous year, which makes the energy sector the fastest growing sector in the EU 800 in 2024. 71.1% of the companies in the sector reported an increase in R&D investment – 10 percentage points higher than the sector’s long-term average. The share of the energy companies in total EU R&D rose to 3.3%, its highest share since 2014. As in the previous years, the largest increases in R&D came from the electricity companies, led by Electricité de France, which doubled its R&D investment within one year, to €1.8 billion.” (p99 of the report).

A calculation confirming the 13.6% increase (well, calculating 13,4%) is visible in our edit of the underlying data.