Sustainable finance: Just the facts please

Sustainable finance goes beyond raising capital, it channels money to real impact and ensures a transparent transition for investors, companies and society. Investors gain insight into environmental and social performance for better decisions, risk management, and spotting credible transition plans.

Companies link financing to outcomes, reinforce accountability, attract capital, and accelerate investments that boost their competitiveness and resilience. Society as whole benefits as capital supports environmental protection social wellbeing and prosperity. While sustainable finance is very much needed, it has also entered a new stage of maturity with much more complexity, in which facts and independent expertise matter.  

Credibility and reputations are at stake 

After surpassing USD 6.5 trillion by Q3 2025, cumulative global issuance of green, social, sustainability and sustainabilitylinked debt rose to USD 8.1 trillion by yearend, illustrating how deeply sustainable finance is embedded in global capital markets. But new and changing regulations, expanding taxonomies and region-specific changes like the EU Omnibus Directive and the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, make the continued growth of sustainable finance difficult. Requirements for sustainable finance have changed from recommendations to mandatory and greenwashing enforcement has entered criminal territory. Credibility and reputations of all parties involved in the sustainable finance value chain are at stake. As this market evolves, issuers and investors in sustainable projects and assets increasingly look for clarity and trusted insights based on facts.   

A clear and factual approach to assurance of sustainable finance  

The value of sustainable finance assurance, such as Second Party Opinions (SPOs), lies in helping market participants understand whether a framework meets established standards or principles, such as those laid down by the International Capital Markets Association (ICMA). For investments intended to meet environmental objectives, the understanding of greenness is increasingly defined by the wide global range of sustainable taxonomies, including those of the EU, Australia and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN).  Also, the growing importance of Do No Significant Harm (DNSH) criteria underscores this shift. DNSH is central to the EU Taxonomy and is becoming a defining feature of taxonomies globally.  

The sustainable finance assurance market is broadly split between two approaches: a tiered or “rating” model, offering relative scoring and a binary model, providing a clear statement of alignment or nonalignment. The binary model reflects what Second Party Opinions were intended to be: factual assessments, based on objective criteria, that allow investors to draw their own conclusions. Interpretive scoring, commercial opinions, or relative judgments other than those stated in the standards, principles and taxonomies can have their value but aren’t fact-based.   

Technical knowledge crucial for transition pathways 

Sustainable finance is increasingly addressing a wider set of environmental and social objectives ranging from climate mitigation, transition, adaptation as well as encompassing objectives linked to circularity, and biodiversity. Assessing these themes requires an understanding of how they translate into technical requirements, sector pathways and credible transition strategies. Transition finance continues to play a critical role in progressing toward net zero. Evaluating transition plans requires sector specific insight, technological understanding and grounded analysis.  

How DNV can help financiers of sustainable projects 

In this complex market, the role of independent, criteria-based assessments by independent experts has become even more important and expectations on assurance providers is shifting.  

Today, DNV is the largest provider of Climate Bonds Initiative (CBI) verification services and performed almost 12% of SPOs globally, reflecting our reputation for consistency, integrity and technical capability. With specialists across Europe, Asia and the Americas, we combine local understanding within globally consistent assessment principles, an increasingly important combination as issuance themes diversifies.   

DNV is also at the top of the ranking of Climate Bonds Standards (CBS) verifications, a separate framework based on defined screening criteria. As experts in sustainability DNV has contributed to and shaped the ASEAN Taxonomy and supporting national taxonomies across Southeast Asia and directly shaped DNSH criteria in the region. 

About DNV 

Founded in 1864, DNV has built trust between owners, developers, financiers and regulators of major infrastructure for more than a century and a half. For over ten of those years, we have applied this institutional strength to sustainable finance, combining technical understanding with independence to support issuance across green, social, sustainability and transition topics. We have 12,000 technical experts of which more than 6,000 experts globally with broad and deep expertise in energy systems.