REVIEWING THE SUSTAINABLE FINANCE LANDSCAPE

This insight brief by the Rocky Mountain Institute (RMI) provides a systemic framework for understanding sustainable finance, specifically focusing on the global energy transition to a low-carbon future. It decomposes financial transactions into five core elements and identifies three primary categories of barriers—risk/return, information, and scale—that impede the flow of capital into sustainability initiatives. The document proposes a matrix of 26 broad strategies, utilizing both policy and non-policy approaches, and applies this framework to case studies on U.S. residential solar and electric vehicles (EVs).

• Sustainable finance transactions are composed of five fundamental elements: a principal (the entity deciding to finance an investment), a financier (the source of capital), an expenditure (the use of capital for sustainability), an agreement governing the source of capital, and an agreement governing the use of capital.
• Barriers to sustainable finance are categorized into three main types: risk/return (insufficient return for actual or perceived risk), information (lack of awareness or understanding of economic value), and scale (opportunities too small to generate necessary focus).
• The document identifies 26 broad sustainable finance strategies derived from combining the five transaction elements, the three barrier types, and two types of approaches: policy (requiring government action like laws or regulations) and non-policy (market-based approaches).
• In the U.S. residential solar market, the primary constraints are located at the expenditure and use-of-capital ends of the transaction rather than the financier side. The highest opportunities for improvement are in simplifying the acquisition process and increasing consumer awareness.
• For electric vehicles (EVs), the primary barrier is a lack of financier demand for instruments suitable for electric vehicle supply equipment (EVSE), which has hindered the development of charging infrastructure and increased consumer range anxiety.

APA

Probst, C., & Campbell, M. (2015). REVIEWING THE SUSTAINABLE FINANCE LANDSCAPE. RMI. https://rmi.org/app/uploads/2017/05/RMI_Document_Repository_Public-Reprts_RMISustainableFinance-InsightBrief.pdf

Chicago

Probst, Curtis, and Martha Campbell. REVIEWING THE SUSTAINABLE FINANCE LANDSCAPE. RMI, 2015. https://rmi.org/app/uploads/2017/05/RMI_Document_Repository_Public-Reprts_RMISustainableFinance-InsightBrief.pdf.

Wikipedia

{{cite report |last1=Probst |first1=Curtis |last2=Campbell |first2=Martha |title=REVIEWING THE SUSTAINABLE FINANCE LANDSCAPE |publisher=RMI |date=October 2015 |url=https://rmi.org/app/uploads/2017/05/RMI_Document_Repository_Public-Reprts_RMISustainableFinance-InsightBrief.pdf |access-date=17 August 2026 |via=Climate Insights Directory}}

BibTeX

@techreport{probst2015reviewing, author = {Probst, Curtis and Campbell, Martha}, title = {{REVIEWING THE SUSTAINABLE FINANCE LANDSCAPE}}, institution = {RMI}, year = {2015}, month = oct, url = {https://rmi.org/app/uploads/2017/05/RMI_Document_Repository_Public-Reprts_RMISustainableFinance-InsightBrief.pdf}, urldate = {2026-08-17}, note = {Indexed by Climate Insights Directory} }