German firms plan to spend about 10.6 percent of investment on climate protection in 2026.

An ifo survey finds German companies spent 9.3 percent of investment on in-house climate protection in 2025, with 10.6 percent planned for 2026 and 10.5 percent for 2027. Service firms plan the highest share at 12.2 percent, retailers the lowest at 8.5 percent.

Sector differences are pronounced. Service providers plan the highest share of climate investment for 2026 at 12.2 percent, followed by construction at 10.5 percent, which aims to raise its share further to 11.2 percent in 2027. Manufacturing comes in at 8.8 percent and retail at 8.5 percent. The figures come from the ifo business survey conducted in May 2026, in which firms reported the share of completed and planned investment going toward cutting greenhouse gases, improving energy efficiency, or generating renewable energy.

Researcher Gerome Wolf sees no meaningful increase in these figures, even though demand for climate-friendly investment is likely to peak in coming years given Paris Agreement commitments and national emissions targets. He points to possible explanations including weaker export competitiveness, rising geopolitical risk, and heavy policy uncertainty around the future path of carbon pricing.

For firms running energy-intensive IT and data center infrastructure, this matters because climate investment shares feed directly into budget decisions on cooling, energy efficiency, and renewable power supply. Wolf leaves open whether more reliable carbon-price rules could ease this reluctance, or whether the investment share simply stays at this level for the medium term.

This story was produced automatically from the source named above and checked by software before publication. The image is symbolic and shows neither the event nor a real person. How this paper is made