In recent years, we’ve seen increased engagement and international agreements on efforts to slow, and even reverse, global warming and build a more resilient, sustainable economy. From the Paris Agreement to the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), one common factor stands out – trillions of dollars of investment is needed to make these shared goals a reality. For more than a decade, Citi has increasingly worked with clients to identify areas where there are business opportunities that also positively impact the environment. We’ve also strengthened our transparency around our reporting to better measure our progress towards our own environmental finance goals.

As a global bank, we play an essential role in financing a sustainable economy, and environmental finance activity represents a tremendous growth opportunity for our business and our clients. Through our $100 Billion Environmental Finance Goal, the flagship initiative of our environmental finance efforts, we work to hold ourselves accountable by measuring, tracking and publicly reporting our activities and impact. In 2017, Citi released a new report, Sustainable Growth at Citi: Progress and Impacts of Citi’s $100 Billion Environmental Finance Goal to share our progress toward the goal and provide more detail about how we are measuring the impact of our environmental finance activities.

The scale of the climate challenge necessitates a major evolution in environmental finance - one that enables rapid growth in technologies that reduce or avoid GHG emissions, such as energy storage and carbon sequestration. While we know that slowing global warming is an important goal, it is also important to look at how to reverse the trend. This will require an unprecedented, cross-sector and international effort to quicken the pace of new technology adoption, while also working toward a responsible transition toward a low-carbon economy. Citi, along with our clients, will continue to work to understand these emerging market opportunities on behalf of our clients, in a way that also addresses the critical SDG development agenda.

Read our full report to learn more about our work in this area