SDG 9.2 Sustainable business

The second part of SDG 9 is about striving for a stronger and more sustainable business community. Small businesses must have better access to high-quality markets and financing. In the Netherlands, the focus is mainly on relations between companies and employees, the role of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and large companies, and the sustainability of production processes and products.

• The means and opportunities that businesses have to make their processes and supply chains more sustainable are no longer improving.
• The energy intensity, material intensity and greenhouse gas intensity of the economy are falling.
• Trust in banks is improving.

Dashboard and indicators

Colour codes and notes to the dashboards in the Monitor of Well-being

The SDG agenda includes indicators that relate to corporate social responsibility (CSR) and business activity in developed countries such as the Netherlands. Some subjects on the SDG agenda are less relevant to the Netherlands, such as increasing the share of manufacturing in the economy.

Resources and opportunities concern the opportunities for companies to make their production processes, energy use and value chains sustainable. The resources and opportunities for sustainable business are no longer improving. The environmental sector’s economic importance has stopped growing. In 2024, the sector accounted for 2.8 percent of GDP and 2.3 percent of total employment. In both cases, that was slightly less than in 2023, but in line with the years before 2023. The environmental sector is the part of the Dutch economy that engages in environmental activities. This includes all companies and organisations that provide products or services explicitly designed to protect the environment or manage natural resources. Firms in the environmental sector are stimulated by international climate agreements such as the Kyoto Protocol (2005) and the Paris Climate Agreement (2015). Initially, the sector focused on waste and wastewater treatment and energy conservation. Today, producing renewable energy, reducing air pollution and curbing greenhouse gas emissions are also important goals.

Sustainability requires investment. In 2025, 12 percent of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) viewed access to finance as a (major) limitation on their business operations. Micro and small enterprises were more likely to encounter difficulties in accessing finance (12 percent reported this) than medium-sized (9 percent) and large enterprises (5 percent). Companies needing finance are more likely to experience obstacles, in some cases very significant obstacles, in accessing finance than those that do not need finance. In order to compare the Netherlands with other EU countries, an international survey is used in which small and medium-sized enterprises are asked to indicate whether they view access to finance as a problem using a scale of 1 to 10 (where 1 means ‘not at all’ and 10 means ‘extremely’). In 2025, the average score given by Dutch entrepreneurs was 3.1, which means they experienced relatively few problems in accessing finance. This put the Netherlands in joint second place in the EU-27 with Sweden: only Denmark scored higher (3.0).

According to KPMG, a large and growing proportion of the 100 largest companies (by turnover) publish sustainability reports. In 2024, 94 of those companies published such a report, four percentage points more than in 2022. Under the EU Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive, only large listed companies with more than 500 employees are required to issue annual sustainability reports, with effect from the 2024 financial year. Other large companies will be required to do so with effect from the 2025 financial year. The Netherlands is near the top of the EU ranking on this indicator (3rd out of 19 countries in 2024).

Use concerns companies’ efforts to make their production processes, energy use and value chains more sustainable. Companies are using less and less energy and materials in their production processes and the energy intensity of the economy is falling. This decline has been underway for at least thirty years. In the mid-1990s, energy intensity was over 180 kilograms of oil equivalents for every 1,000 euros of GDP (in 2015 prices). By 2024, energy intensity had fallen to 89.1 kilograms of oil equivalents, 3.5 percent lower than in 2023. Energy intensity is also falling in the other EU countries. In 2024, the Dutch economy had relatively low energy intensity (7th out of 27 countries). Besides the shift towards more sustainable processes, the decrease in energy intensity may be the result of a change in the production structure (a shift from manufacturing to services), a reduction in the activity of energy-intensive companies, or the offshoring of certain activities.

Domestic material consumption per capita is also falling. This indicator represents the amount of materials consumed through economic activity in the Netherlands, excluding materials that are re-exported without processing. In 2024, the Netherlands had the lowest level in the EU-27, at 8 tonnes of materials used per capita. The downward trend is linked to more efficient use of raw materials and the ever-increasing role of services in the Dutch economy.

Outcomes relate to the actual sustainability of production processes and value chains. The greenhouse gas intensity of the economy is decreasing and low within the EU-27. In 2025, 0.19 kilograms of CO₂ equivalents were emitted for every euro of GDP. In recent years, GDP has grown (in constant prices), while greenhouse gas emissions have fallen. In 2025 emissions rose again, but the economy grew at a faster pace than the rise in emissions, meaning that the greenhouse gas intensity of the economy still declined.

Labour income accounted for 69.9 percent of earned income in 2024, and this proportion is falling. In the mid-1990s, the labour income share (LIS) was above 80 percent. This means that companies’ operating profits have steadily increased relative to labour income, as a share of the economy. The LIS is only calculated for industries where it makes sense to distinguish between income from labour and profit (the market sector). The LIS is not calculated for the government sector, education, healthcare, the mining and quarrying industry, financial services or real estate activities. Rising profits in the machinery sector and among energy companies appear to have caused a sustained reduction in the labour income share relative to previous years (approximately 70 percent since 2021, compared to approximately 74 percent previously).

Subjective assessment provides a picture of how satisfied people in employment are with their working conditions, and how much trust people place in banks and large corporations. More and more people aged 15 or older have fairly or very high trust in banks and how they operate. Trust in banks has increased from a low of 34 percent in 2013 to 58.4 percent in 2025. In 2024, the corresponding figure was 54.2 percent. Trust in large companies remained constant in 2025.

Figures from CBS and the Netherlands Organisation for Applied Scientific Research (TNO) show that in 2025, 77.7 percent of workers were satisfied with their working conditions. Satisfaction was roughly the same as in previous years.