The Language Has Changed, But the Work Continues - New York Climate Week 2025
The headlines say ESG is dead in the US. But New York Climate Week was the biggest one yet, and behind closed doors, investors are financing more climate transition projects than ever—they've just stopped calling them that.
Our co-founder and CCO Krista was at New York Climate Week and had loads of interesting conversations. I interviewed her about what this language shift means for the market, why AI dominated every conversation, and whether this is a permanent change or just part of a cycle.
"The language of climate investing has changed to mask the developments that are happening"
- Krista Tukiainen
Krista told me, "You have to be exceptionally brave to still call yourself a 'sustainable investor' in the US."
The work is continuing, but investors are being strategic about language. Krista found that banks and investors are underwriting and buying more bonds from companies financing the climate transition, especially in energy, but these bonds increasingly don't carry green or other sustainability-related labels.
And AI? It was everywhere. "The triangle was the discussion around grid, power and AI - how do we bring these three things into some sort of equilibrium, because they're not at that currently."
Read the complete interview here
What we've been working on
While the US market navigates political headwinds, the fundamentals of labelled bond analysis haven't changed. This week we published two guides to help you make the most of reporting season and understand what our bond product can do:
How to Do Reporting Season: A Practical Guide for Labelled Bond Funds (Sep 29) A practical framework for developing robust labelled bond portfolio reports that satisfy stakeholder expectations while telling a compelling story about your fund's impact.
Bond Product Overview: Coverage, Features, and How It Works (Sep 26) Our comprehensive dataset now covers 32,384 bonds and $6.3 trillion in issuance since 2006—valuable for both pre-issuance and post-issuance analysis.
What we're reading this week
Two different industry analyses on the state of the labelled bond market:
Green Bond Market Resilience in 2025 - Analysis on USD-denominated green bond issuance (Van Eck)
ESG Strategist - ESG issuance expected to considerably lag in 2025 (ABN Amro)
Thanks for reading!
– Natasha Salmi
Explore our products:
app.climatealigned.co - Access our labelled bond data service with insights on 30,000+ bonds. Check out a free sample!
brief.green - Run AI-powered ESG assessments on-demand. Try it for free!
Want to learn more about what we do? Visit climatealigned.co
