In a changing political landscape, the implementation of circular economy strategies presents significant potential for reducing greenhouse gas emissions, decreasing fossil fuel use and altering trade dynamics. Circular economy strategies related to material reduction, reuse and recovery complement industrial decarbonisation measures and have the potential to double GHG savings by 2050.

Through a multi-method analysis, this study shows that an ambitious circular economy scenario can yield substantial annual GHG savings across selected energy-intensive sectors and decrease EU imports, reducing trade dependency and increasing the trade balance by over EUR 30 billion compared to the decarbonised baseline.