Industrial pollution costs 2% of Europe's GDP: report

Industrial pollution costs the equivalent of two percent of the European Union's economic output each year, though the impact has declined over the past decade, the bloc's environmental agency said Thursday.

Costs of air pollution caused by Europe's largest industrial plants are "substantial," averaging between 268 billion to 428 billion euros ($295 million to 470 million) per year, the Copenhagen-based European Environmental Agency said in a report.

For 2021, the most recent year available, the costs corresponded to about two percent of the EU's gross domestic product.

However, thanks to better technologies, less polluting fuels, and the rollout of renewable energies, those costs have declined by about a third since 2012, the EEA said.

The agency said that just one percent, or 107, of the most polluting industrial facilities - many of them coal power plants - caused half of the total damage.

Nine of the 50 most polluting plants were in Germany and six in Poland, it said.