Exploring European SMEs in the cleantech sector: a survey-based analysis through European Green Deal pillars

The European Green Deal stands as a pivotal driver for the experimental research conducted within this thesis. The project entails a comprehensive study of the Green Deal and its pillars through official documentation, integrated with interviews extracted from conferences and literature articles. The entire project follows a structured approach based on the pillars of the European Green Deal. As part of a broader three-year project falling under the EIBURS initiative, I directly engaged in the development and implementation of a questionnaire targeting small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) across Europe. We meticulously implemented the questionnaire, from its architectural design to administration and subsequent analysis of responses. The study of these responses not only provides valuable insights but also serves as a guiding indicator for the project’s sponsors, the European Investment Fund (EIF) and the European Investment Bank (EIB). In this historical period, characterized by substantial efforts to achieve the primary goal of net-zero emissions by 2050, our research contributes to the ongoing discourse on sustainable development and environmental policy implementation. Following all the good practices of good questionnaire design, aware of the limitations and practical solutions, we developed an in-depth quantitative analysis of the responses obtained. The questionnaire proves to be a useful tool to advise the principal on actions to be taken to facilitate European SME’s cleantech. All analyzed responses obtained from a sample of 23868 companies proved the hypotheses developed during formulation. A detailed analysis of each question is described in the following sections. We sometimes identified different behaviors based on the clustering of companies between innovators and ecosystem. One interesting insight, which leaves room for future research, was the attempt to aggregate other socioeconomic data from firms to group responses. A higher response rate would allow much more interesting insights and analysis. In general, we can say that 50% of European small and medium-sized companies feel ready to individually meet the EGD targets within the next 25 years. 50% of companies are also convinced that their nation is capable of achieving the goals proposed by the EGD. Interesting variances by geographic region are noted: Nordic countries and Central Europe are more confident than the Mediterranean and Eastern regions. It is noteworthy that as many as 83% of companies are confident that the entire European Union will meet the EGD goals. In this case, it is the "trailed" countries that are the most confident in the undertaking.