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Sustainable
Trend report Clean and Emission Free Building 2025
De Groene Koers, the sector platform of construction & infra, which includes green maintenance, presents the Trend Report Clean and Emission Free Building 2025. The survey of more than 350 entrepreneurs shows that the sector is making great strides toward emission-free construction. More and more companies have zero-emission equipment, but compensation for its deployment and charging infrastructure are lagging behind.
Trend report Clean and Emission-Free Construction 2025: Construction sector takes big steps towards emission-free, but support still needed
How satisfied are contractors with the compensation they receive for deploying zero-emission (ZE) equipment? Are entrepreneurs willing to invest in clean machines? And how many companies can already work zero-emission?
To gain insight into this, De Groene Koers conducted a survey among its supporters in the spring of 2025. More than 350 companies completed it, giving a clear picture of the trends in clean and emission-free construction.
The research shows that four in ten entrepreneurs will already have (partially) emission-free operations by 2024. More than half already have ZE equipment - mainly in the lighter classes up to 19 kW and 37 kW, but over 20% also already have medium-heavy machines (56-130 kW) in use. This category includes many popular, widely deployable equipment types.
Willingness to invest varies greatly by turnover class: the larger the company, the greater the willingness to invest. For example, three-quarters of the companies with a turnover of up to €5 million do not see any opportunities in ZE for the time being, while for companies above €25 million that proportion drops to around 20%. Main reasons for not investing (yet) are high purchase costs, lack of demand from customers, insufficient compensation for additional costs and a shortage of charging infrastructure.
Those concerns are not unjustified: two-thirds of business owners do not receive compensation or rate it as inadequate. Signatories of the SEB covenant compensate relatively more often, but even they still score inadequate on average.
Entrepreneurs make several recommendations in the report, including a call for clients to structurally solicit ZE and invest in charging facilities. The Green Course sees that the movement is accelerating: the number of municipalities that have signed the SEB covenant increased to more than 25% in the past six months. This also increases the expectation that the demand for zero-emission equipment will grow substantially in the coming years.