Photo: Lance Cheung / US Air Force
More often than not, reporting on anything to do with climate change involves stories about the increasingly severe global situation.
2025 is expected to be the joint-second warmest year on record, while extreme weather events – described as “the new normal” – have hit Morocco, Nigeria, Pakistan, California, Texas, southern Europe and south-east Asia amongst others, causing death and destruction for the people caught in their wake.
So it’s easy to miss the success stories, those moments when events shift in a positive direction and the net-zero world moves one step closer. Whether it’s the boom in renewable energy, new climate leaders emerging on the global stage or the global south forging ahead on its own terms, there’s much from the past 12 months to celebrate.
Here are just seven of our favourites, some we’ve already reported on and others we didn’t have time or space for – but all are reminders that it most certainly isn’t all bad news.
Renewable energy wins on cost
The International Renewable Energy Agency’s annual report on the cost of renewables provides one of the best news stories this year. 91% of new renewable projects are now cheaper than fossil fuel alternatives. This is a watershed moment for financial markets—renewables aren’t just environmentally sound, they’re economically optimal.
Additionally, in 2024 renewables helped avoid $467bn in fossil fuel costs, “reinforcing their role not only as the lowest-cost source of new power but also as a key driver of energy security, economic stability, and resilience in a volatile global energy landscape”.
Yet a financing gap threatens this trajectory. While battery storage costs have plummeted 93% since 2010, financing costs create significant barriers in certain regions. Capital costs range from 3.8% in Europe to 12% in Africa, reflecting perceived investment risk. IW
Solar boom pushes renewables share of electricity generation above 40%
The explosive growth of solar energy means renewable sources provided more than 40% of the world’s electricity in 2024, the first time that figure has been reached since the 1940s, according to a report by energy think tank Ember.
Solar energy now provides nearly 7% of total electricity, while wind energy is also growing. Together, wind and energy now exceed hydropower, while nuclear reached a 45-year low in terms of its share.
However, carbon emissions keep rising as demand for electricity is growing faster than the increase in capacity for clean energy.
The International Energy Agency predicts that peak electricity demand will rise around 40% by 2035, mainly due to increased need for cooling, with data centres and AI accounting for less than 10% of global growth. And also by 2035, 80% of global energy consumption growth will occur in regions with high levels of sunshine for solar power. ET
Ruling by top UN court opens way to climate reparations
Countries can now be held legally accountable for their carbon emissions, after a landmark ruling by the UN’s highest court in July. The advisory opinion from the International Court of Justice concluded that those harmed by climate change may be entitled to reparations.
“The climate change treaties set forth binding obligations for states parties to ensure the protection of the climate system and other parts of the environment from anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions,” the ruling states.
The court said countries that violate their legal climate obligations would commit an “internationally wrongful act”. Assuming that causation can be proven, the court based in The Hague said countries breaching their obligations could be obliged to pay “full reparation to injured states in the form of restitution, compensation and satisfaction”.
This is the first time that the ICJ, established in 1945, has ruled on an environmental issue. Legislators, judges, lawyers and diplomats will now be able to use it to change laws, take states to court and attempt to accelerate climate negotiations, Le Monde reported. ET
China leading the way on green banking
The past year saw a rollback of climate regulatory initiatives in the US and EU, but not in China. The country not only came top of the scorecard, but CO2 emissions have also been flat or falling for the past 18 months.
The country is in a race to become a climate leader and it just might be paying off. While China still relies heavily on coal, it has also expanded its clean energy technologies which now make up more than 10% of the Chinese economy.
The People’s Bank of China has a clear mandate from the top to focus on climate issues, including climate stress testing, green finance guidelines and low-interest funding for carbon reduction projects and green bonds in the central bank’s collateral framework.
“[The PBoC] is making real change and beyond that [it] is also leading … the thinking of the whole financial policymakers and financial industries in China about what is beyond the current timeline,” said Ting Su, Chinese sustainable research associate at the World Resources Institute. MC
Indonesia’s central bank leading the country’s green transition
Although Indonesia is one of the largest CO2 emitters in the world, that’s not keeping its central bank from developing green finance.
It was a strong performer in the first East and Southeast Asia Green Central Banking Scorecard in 2025, due to Indonesia’s financial sector omnibus law that gives the central bank a clear green mandate. It also works with other financial regulators both in Indonesia and south-east Asia, which informs the central bank’s broader green initiatives.
In an interview with Green Central Banking, Heru Rahadyan, deputy director at the financial inclusion and green economy department at Bank Indonesia, outlined how the central bank is helping transform the country’s financial institutions into green banks. MC
Africa’s renewables revolution
In 2025, it seemed Africa’s green energy moment has finally arrived. As the year comes to a close, large-scale investments are flowing into the continent’s renewable infrastructure markets. For example, European leaders have pledged US$15.5bn in new climate finance.
“This is Africa’s time,” declared Dr Sidi Ould Tah, president of the African Development Bank Group (AfDB).
At the Africa Climate Summit in Addis Ababa this September, African leaders outlined a fundamental shift in how they are positioning the continent’s role in the global green economy. “We are not here to negotiate our survival. We are here to design the world’s next climate economy,” declared Ethiopian prime minister Abiy Ahmed.
In the Addis Ababa declaration, leaders demand investment partnerships built around grants and concessional funding, not debt instruments that deepen fiscal crises. They also announced regional plans to mobilise $50bn annually in home grown financial solutions by 2030.
Alongside this, two flagship AfDB-led initiatives are helping mobilise capital at unprecedented scale. Mission 300, launched in January 2025 in partnership with the World Bank, aims to connect 300 million Africans to electricity by 2030 through $90bn in combined public and private investment. And Desert-to-Power aims to unlock 10 gigawatts of solar capacity by 2030, reaching 250 million people across 11 countries.
Yet Power Shift Africa cautions that these platforms must break from past failures. The thinktank’s Mission 300 briefing outlines six non-negotiables: fossil fuel exclusion, public-community ownership, grant financing, debt cancellation, green industrialisation, and accountability. IW
NGFS keeps fighting without US
Despite a US exodus from climate commitment groups, a group of central bankers vowed to keep fighting to help the financial sector mitigate risks of climate change even without the support of the US Federal Reserve.
The Fed left the Network for Greening the Financial System (NGFS) in early January amid a turning point in US politics and efforts to green the national economy, as Donald Trump’s administration took a strong anti-green stance, even going as far as to call climate change a hoax.
The remaining members of the NGFS have continued without the US, releasing a short-term climate scenario analysis that found climate disasters could dent global growth by 3% in the next five years. The group also teamed up with finance ministers on the sidelines of Cop30 to promote collaboration efforts around managing climate risks and accelerating the energy transition. MC
This page was last updated December 18, 2025
Written by
Moriah Costa is the Editor-in-Chief of Green Central Banking and has over a decade of experience writing about banking and finance. She is an award-winning American journalist based in Paris and has written for major international publications, including Reuters, The Guardian, and S&P Global. Having grown up in water-stressed Arizona, she has always had a strong interest in bringing awareness to climate and environmental issues.
Emma Thomasson is a British journalist, consultant and trainer based in Berlin. She is an expert in economics, politics, business and technology. She previously worked for Reuters as a correspondent and bureau chief in Germany, Switzerland, the Netherlands, South Africa and the UK.
Ike Walker, a Green Central Banking contributor since 2023, has a decade's experience in research writing. An Utrecht-based scholar, Ingrid specialises in transformative justice, green finance, law and systems change. They are an Utrecht University's Bright Minds scholar and previously worked for Cambridge University and various justice-based NGOs.
