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Our barometer stands out for its qualitative approach and rigorous methodology, analyzing up to 500 data points per fund. This approach allows us to identify five major trends that are shaping the current landscape of sustainable finance and its future prospects.
Despite growing commitments to carbon neutrality, our barometer reveals that 83% of funds have made no public commitment regarding their exit from hydrocarbons. This reluctance to divest from fossil fuels is observed both in Europe and the United States, with 68% and 77% of funds respectively having made no commitment to a gradual transition away from hydrocarbons.
More surprisingly, our analysis highlights a paradox concerning Article 9 funds, which are supposed to be the most demanding in terms of sustainability according to SFDR. Only 17% of them exclude companies developing new coal, oil, and gas projects, compared to 22% for Article 8 funds. This situation raises questions, as one might legitimately expect Article 9 funds, presented as the most demanding in terms of sustainability, to adopt stricter exclusion criteria.
Between 2023 and 2024, the proportion of funds excluding companies involved in new oil and gas projects increased by only 2 percentage points, from 24% to 26%. This marginal evolution demonstrates a concerning inertia in the face of climate urgency and underscores that the road to finance truly aligned with the Paris Agreement remains long.
Shareholder engagement has established itself as an essential strategy in sustainable finance. Our barometer reveals that 84% of ESG funds now incorporate shareholder engagement in their investment strategy. This widespread adoption demonstrates a growing awareness: beyond simple exclusion, supporting companies in their transformation constitutes a powerful lever to accelerate the transition toward a more sustainable economy.
However, despite this widespread adoption, 83% of funds that promote engagement in their pre-contractual annexes do not publish detailed reports at the fund level. This lack of transparency raises fundamental questions about the actual effectiveness of these engagement policies and the credibility of ESG approaches.
Our analysis reveals significant regional differences in terms of transparency in shareholder engagement. France stands out with 35% of its funds publishing dialogue reports, compared to only 14% in the United Kingdom and a mere 8% in the United States. This French advantage can be explained by the existence of initiatives encouraging engagement, such as the ISR Label. The SFDR 2.0 regulation may also require funds to document their engagement actions.
The contrast is also striking in the quantitative approach to engagement: American asset management companies engage with an average of 1,169 issuers, nearly triple that of French actors (402). This quantitative difference masks a qualitative reality: only 56% of American managers incorporate divestment as an ultimate solution in their escalation process, compared to 82% of their European counterparts. Even more revealing, no American asset management company includes ESG rating downgrade in its process, compared to 30% of European actors. This American approach, favoring quantity without robust escalation mechanisms, time limits, or predefined consequences, risks transforming engagement into a simple greenwashing exercise rather than a genuine transformation lever.
Our 2025 barometer highlights a major geopolitical reality: Europe and the United States are now following radically different trajectories in sustainable finance. 70% of European funds exclude companies developing new coal-related projects, compared to only 38% in the United States. This considerable gap illustrates fundamentally different approaches to sustainability, rooted in distinct political, regulatory, and cultural contexts.
This divergence is accentuated regarding transition commitments. Nearly half of European asset management companies are concretely committed to transition, particularly through a gradual exit from coal, compared to barely 1/5 in the United States. France maintains its leadership with 88% of its asset management companies committed to this transition.
One of the most striking phenomena in recent years is the massive withdrawal of American financial institutions from the main international climate coalitions. The six largest American banks left the Net Zero Banking Alliance (NZBA) in 2024, while several major asset managers, including BlackRock, withdrew from the Net Zero Asset Managers Initiative (NZAM).
This withdrawal movement is taking place in an increasingly hostile American political context toward ESG approaches, characterized by the adoption of anti-ESG laws in numerous Republican states and the growing pressure from conservative elected officials on financial institutions. Conversely, although there is a desire to simplify certain regulations with the Omnibus law, Europe continues to strengthen its regulatory framework in favor of sustainable finance, further widening this transatlantic divide.
Three years after its implementation, the SFDR regulation is about to undergo a major transformation. This overhaul, commonly called "SFDR 2.0," responds to a crucial need for clarification for all market participants. The European Platform on Sustainable Finance has proposed a new classification of financial products structured around three main categories: "Sustainable," "Transition," and "ESG Collection."
However, our 2025 barometer reveals an alarming finding: none of the 50 funds studied meets the criteria for the "Sustainable" and "Transition" categories proposed under the SFDR overhaul, and only 4% could claim the "ESG Collection" classification. This widespread mismatch between current practices and future regulatory requirements raises fundamental questions about the feasibility of this regulatory transition.
Regarding the "Transition" category, several major obstacles have been identified: only 8% of funds commit to a quantified greenhouse gas emission reduction target, 26% report a taxonomy alignment share of their investments greater than 1%, 32% publish quantitative reporting on mandatory PAIs, and none perform a comparison with a European climate benchmark.
For the "ESG Collection" category, the situation is barely better, with only 2 out of 50 funds satisfying all the required criteria. Paradoxically, these two funds are currently classified as Article 9, while the "ESG Collection" seems conceptually closer to Article 8.
Faced with the growing complexity of regulatory requirements and the increasing volume of data to process, the industrialization of ESG processes is becoming a strategic imperative for financial actors, requiring significant investments in information systems and analytical skills.
In the constantly evolving landscape of sustainable finance, a significant trend emerges from our 2025 barometer: unlike ESG indices that favor a systematic sectoral exclusion approach, sustainable investment funds adopt more nuanced strategies, combining rigorous selection and shareholder engagement.
While the Eurostoxx 600 ESG index adopts a radical position by completely excluding the energy sector, ESG funds maintain limited exposure, with 2.5% of their assets invested in energy companies selected for their transition commitments. This exposure, although lower than that of the non-ESG Eurostoxx index (4.7%), reflects a more nuanced approach to energy transition.
Our analysis also reveals that ESG funds place particular importance on companies' climate commitments in their selection process. 87% of companies in the top 15 ESG funds have committed to a target of limiting warming to 1.5°C in the short term, validated by the Science Based Targets initiative (SBTi). This figure positions ESG funds between the traditional STOXX 600 Europe (80% committed companies) and its ESG version (93%).
The analysis of carbon performance reveals an apparent paradox that perfectly illustrates the need for a multidimensional approach. On one hand, the carbon intensity of the top 15 ESG funds (1,239 tons of CO2/million in revenue) proves virtually identical to that of the traditional STOXX 600. On the other hand, in terms of absolute emissions, the top 15 ESG funds emit nearly three times less than the top 15 of the non-ESG Eurostoxx 600.
This "best-in-class" strategy, where managers select the most advanced companies in terms of sustainability within each sector, demonstrates the added value of active management in sustainable finance. It allows for better diversification, potentially greater impact, and a more nuanced vision of transition than the systematic sectoral exclusion practiced by ESG indices.
Our 2025 sustainable finance barometer highlights contrasting trends, revealing both significant advances and persistent challenges in the integration of ESG criteria within investment strategies.
The gap between stated ambitions and actual practices, particularly visible in hydrocarbon exclusion policies, calls for greater coherence and transparency. Shareholder engagement, although widely adopted, requires more rigorous documentation to demonstrate its actual effectiveness. The widening transatlantic divide between Europe and the United States is redrawing the global map of sustainable finance, while the mismatch with future regulatory requirements underscores the magnitude of necessary transformations.
In this complex context, active ESG management, favoring a "best-in-class" approach and a multidimensional analysis of environmental performance, appears as a relevant response to the challenges of sustainable finance. It allows for moving beyond binary approaches and effectively contributing to supporting companies in their transition toward more sustainable models.
Faced with these challenges, the industrialization of ESG processes becomes a strategic imperative. Financial institutions that can implement robust data collection and analysis systems, develop transparent and coherent evaluation methodologies, and effectively communicate their practices and results will position themselves as tomorrow's leaders in sustainable finance.
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