‘The State of Green Banks 2025’ Report Released During Spring Meetings of WB and IMF
On 25 April 2025, the report on ‘The State of Green Banks 2025: Learnings from Green Financing Structures Around the World’ was officially released during the segment on “Unlocking Sustainable Growth’ as part of its Spring Meetings of the World Bank (WB) and International Monetary Fund (IMF) in Washington DC. The report was commissioned by Bezos Earth Fund and prepared by Climate Policy Initiative and the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC). The Africa Development Bank (AfDB) also contributed via its African Green Banks Initiative (#AGBI).
The Report explores and compares the models of #GreenBanking of more than 50 financial institutions around the world, highlights current challenges and then offers recommendations to scale up #GreenFinance.
Among the persistent challenges noted, many banks face limited access to Green Capital, operate within an inadequate regulatory framework and have significant capacity gaps.
To close these gaps, the Report puts forward the concept of the ‘Green Bank Accelerator.’ The Accelerator will offer both technical and financial assistance to Sustainable Finance. It also advocates the creation of a global coalition of Green Banks to promote knowledge sharing and coordinated action across the green finance global ecosystem.
For countries embarking on their #GreenFinance journey, the Climate Policy Initiative (CPI) makes available a ‘Green Bank Design Guide’ and proposes four baseline models for consideration. The baseline model acts as a template which can then be adapted to the circumstances prevailing in a given country in order to kickstart the Green Finance journey in a given jurisdiction.
It is worth noting that our of the pool of banks under study, 36 are based in or are actively engaged with Emerging Markets and Developing Economies (EMDE). At the Africa regional level, the #AfDB is already working with member countries to increase the level of #ClimateFinance in support of their #SustainableGrowth targets.