By Marina Grossi*
The energy transition has become a central theme in global finance. By 2025, banks will have earned more revenue from financing low-carbon projects than from operations linked to fossil fuels, according to a survey by Bloomberg Green. Green loans and the issuance of debt securities linked to sustainability – known as green bonds – For the first time, they reached a level close to US$1 trillion, totaling US$947 billion worldwide. This is also happening in major US banks, which, for the fourth consecutive year, earned more by financing climate-related projects: revenues from green loans and bonds totaled US$3.7 billion, 28% more than the US$2.9 billion obtained from operations related to oil, coal, and natural gas.
In the case of the US, it is worth highlighting that the increased presence of sustainable investments in banks' portfolios occurs precisely at a time when the government of Republican Donald Trump encouraged major Wall Street institutions to officially disengage from the climate agenda. This led to the end of the Net Zero Banking Alliance, a coalition launched at COP26 in Glasgow, Scotland, in 2021, with the aim of stimulating investments in mitigating greenhouse gas emissions. Furthermore, Trump withdrew the US from the Paris Agreement and the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, dismantled programs and subsidies that encouraged investments in clean energy sources and electric vehicles, and suspended the construction of offshore wind farms licensed during his predecessor's administration.
Despite the offensive, investors' appetite for sustainable technologies shows no sign of cooling down. This can be explained by a very simple reason: this race is unstoppable, as clean technologies are the future, regardless of the importance that fossil fuels still represent for the global energy matrix. Some projections from the International Energy Agency (IEA) point to a scenario in which the growth of oil supply begins to slow down around 2028, reflecting the decrease in production in older fields – the IEA estimates a drop in production of 8% per year by the next decade.
In the context of declared policies (with countries implementing their climate and energy security commitments), the signal is even clearer: oil demand will peak at 102 million barrels/day around 2030, and then begin to decline gradually. Within this timeframe, the share of global electric vehicle (EV) sales will rise from over 201 TPP currently to over 501 TPP by 2035, despite the decline in sales of these cars in the US, influenced by Donald Trump's policies. By 2035, more than 840 million EVs will reduce oil consumption by 10 million barrels per day, mainly in Asia and Europe. Given that the installation of low-carbon power generation capacity has accelerated since 2010 and EV sales have gained momentum since 2020, with China leading this movement, the financial activity supporting these technological fronts is clear. In 2025, China alone accounted for a record US$1.138 billion in emissions. green bonds, driven by their biggest banks.
Investing in sustainable technologies yields financial returns for companies and financial institutions, which are unwilling to forgo these gains. At the same time, the world needs to scale up these solutions – financing the transition to a low-carbon economy, especially for developing countries, remains one of the main challenges of the climate COPs. “The future is already here, it’s just not distributed” – this phrase, by science fiction writer William Gibson, has been used by former US Vice President Al Gore to show that climate solutions already exist, work, and are cheaper, but still don't reach the countries that need them most.
Gore, who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2007 for his climate activism, has said that the problem is not technological, but financial: the global investment system overestimates risks in developing countries, blocking access to capital for emerging technologies that could help mitigate greenhouse gas emissions. To "distribute the future," it is essential to correct this flaw, create mechanisms that reduce risks, and allow private capital to finance the energy transition where it matters most, especially in the Global South.
Some paths are beginning to take shape, as became evident at COP30 in Belém. The Baku-Belém Roadmap starts from the recognition that mobilizing the US$1.3 trillion annually needed by developing countries until 2035 is not only a financial challenge, but also an institutional and political one. The challenge of our time is to ensure that this future reaches everyone. Sustainable finance is the bridge between what is already possible and what still needs to be done. Correcting the distortions of the global financial system is the decisive step to transform innovation into impact, growth into inclusion, and the energy transition into shared prosperity.
* Marina Grossi is the president of CEBDS (Brazilian Business Council for Sustainable Development), an organization with 28 years of experience and 120 large member companies, and Special Envoy of the COP30 Presidency for the Business Sector.
