This archive collects milestones and progress stories involving the finance sector — banks, investment firms, development funds, and financial institutions driving positive change. From inclusive lending to green investment, these stories highlight how money moves toward better outcomes.
In a major boost to Kenya’s nascent electric motorcycle and tuk-tuk sector, Kenya’s largest bank has partnered with the United Nations Institute for Training and Research to roll out a program that is expected to create over 150,000 new green jobs over six years.
Ecuador just pulled off the largest debt-for-nature swap ever signed, unlocking an estimated $450 million for Galápagos marine conservation over the coming decades. The deal works by trading expensive international bonds for a cheaper loan, then channeling the savings into a new independent fund overseen by a board that mixes government ministers with civil society voices. Roughly $12 million a year will flow to park rangers, fisheries monitoring, and enforcement across one of the planet’s most extraordinary marine ecosystems — home to marine iguanas and the world’s northernmost penguins. Several Caribbean and Pacific island nations are already exploring similar structures, suggesting this could become a template for protecting threatened ecosystems wherever heavy debt and rich biodiversity overlap.
Clean energy investment hit $1.1 trillion globally in 2022, matching every dollar spent on fossil fuels for the first time ever. Electric vehicles led the charge, with spending jumping 54 percent in a single year to $466 billion. Wind, solar, batteries, and heat pumps all set records too — this wasn’t a fluke driven by one hot sector, but money moving across the whole clean economy. China poured in nearly half the total, sparking a kind of race that tends to push costs down for everyone. Parity isn’t the finish line — the world still needs to roughly quadruple this pace to hit net zero by 2050 — but it’s the moment the global energy story quietly flipped.
Denmark’s biggest bank has declared an end to fossil fuel financing, after concluding that 99.9% of its carbon footprint comes from financed emissions.
In 2020, HSBC – Europe’s largest bank – made a pledge to be “net zero” and invest up to $1 trillion in clean energy. But the bank has since come under criticism for investing billions in new oil and gas.
The German reinsurance group Munich Re will no longer invest in or insure the planning, financing, construction or operation of new oil and gasfields, new oil-fired power plants or developments in “midstream” oil infrastructure, beginning in April 2023.
The solution produces clean energy by fusing together atomic nuclei. Unlike nuclear fission, there is also no risk of radioactive waste and reactor materials can be recycled within 100 to 300 years.
Two planned coal-fired power plants, one in Indonesia and the other in Bangladesh, have had their funding withdrawn by the Japanese government, as part of Tokyo’s decision to no longer bankroll coal projects in either country.
As one example, Adani Group recently agreed to develop 500 megawatts of renewable energy projects in Mannar and Pooneryn provinces.
The bank has also said it will target a 50% increase in lending for renewable energy by 2025, building on strong growth in 2021, when financing grew 26% to 7.3 billion euros.
