Sustainable Bond Analysis
Full year 2025
Published February 2026
Global sustainable bond issuance of $1.1 trillion remains steady despite significant regional and sectoral shifts
Key takeaways
- China’s sustainable bond issuance has risen sharply - now roughly double that of the United States - with issuance concentrated among financial institutions
- Europe maintains its position as the leading region for total sustainable bond issuance, recording a slight year‑over‑year increase
- Green bonds continue to dominate issuance, while social and transition bond volumes decline
- Renewable energy, clean transportation and energy efficiency lead in terms of pre-issuance use-of-proceeds categories, with issuers continuing to lean into flexible structures
Overall issuance remains stable year-over-year
The overall volume of sustainable bond issuance across fixed income instrument types1 remained broadly stable in 2025 compared to 2024, with total annual issuance reaching approximately $1.1 trillion globally. The portion of total issuance that included second-party verification was also similar to previous years. Despite this stability at the aggregate level, significant shifts occurred across regions, bond types, and sectors.
Green bonds continue to dominate. Green bonds continued to lead the sustainable bond market in 2025, maintaining their position as the largest category by volume. Sustainable bonds followed as the second-largest segment.
Year-over-year trends also differ by bond type. Green bonds and sustainable bonds both recorded modest year-over-year increases, reinforcing their role as core components of the sustainable debt market. Social bond issuance declined in 2025 compared with 2024 as activity normalized after the heightened social spending seen during the pandemic years.
Sustainability-linked bonds (SLBs) continued their multi-year downturn, with 2025 representing the fourth consecutive year of decreased issuance. Transition bonds, a relatively small segment of the sustainable bond market by issuance volume, saw issuance ease after strong growth in 2024. This decline was driven in large part by reduced issuance activity in Asia.
In contrast, blue bond issuance, though a small segment of the market in absolute terms, more than doubled between 2024 and 2025, driven by activity in both Europe and Asia. This growth suggests increasing investor focus on ocean-related sustainability projects and marks a geographic diversification beyond Asia-Pacific’s (APAC’s) historical dominance of this segment.
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1 Throughout this analysis, the sustainable fixed instruments included are: corporate bonds, government/agency bonds, US municipal bonds, money market instruments, collateralized mortgage obligations (CMOs) and mortgage-backed securities (MBS). Securitized coverage (CMOs and MBS) excludes the U.S.
2 Lin Lin, The rise of sustainable finance in China: ESG funds and regulation, Capital Markets Law Journal, Volume 20, Issue 4, December 2025, kmaf015, https://doi.org/10.1093/cmlj/kmaf015
3 UN Environmental Program Report (Jan 2026). Greening the Chinese banking system: A policy and regulatory landscape analysis. Available at: https://www.unepfi.org/regions/asia-pacific/greening-the-chinese-banking-system
4 The figures and analyses provided here include only those sustainable securitized instruments currently in the ICE Climate Analytics Platform. ICE’s securitized instrument coverage excludes U.S. securities.
5 China issuance includes corporate, government/agency, supranational, CMOs, MBSs and money market instruments.
6 What other countries can learn from how China financed a green transformation (25 June 2025). Environmental Finance. Available at: https://www.environmental-finance.com/content/analysis/what-other-countries-can-learn-from-how-china-financed-a-green-transformation.html
Related resources
- See nowA guide to sustainable bonds