Responsible Alpha's Top 10 in 2025 Forecast Assessment: How Did We Do?

Reflecting upon Responsible Alpha's top

January 1, 2025, Responsible Alpha id well. Responsible Alpha’s 2025 Top Ten:

10. ESG In Your Backpack, Ready for Travel: Standardized and Portable ESG

Forecast: Demand for standardized and simplified ESG reporting that can be transported across geographies will grow. While ESG is an acronym used for the first time in 2004, many of the underlying ESG metrics are much older. In fact, the metric “reporting the number of members of a board” – a commonly used governance metric dates to its mandatory use under the NYS State Corporate Law of 1811. In 2025, the anti-ESG forces will continue to mimic Don Quixote and chase imagery enemies.
Result: ESG simplification is occurring across the EU and elsewhere.

9. Sustainable Finance Grow ex-US: US Fumbles

Forecast: Sustainable finance will grow despite the new US administration as US sustainable assets are only 11% of global sustainable AUM, as per the Morningstar definition.
Result: 85% of investors expect AUM linked to ESG to grow over the next two years, according to Bloomberg Intelligence.

8. Against Global DEI Pushback: We Won’t Go Back

Forecast: Despite targeted efforts to dismantle DEI, global DEI efforts will grow with increasing data driven approaches, adoption of intersectionality, and inclusive leadership recognized as a core competency.
Result: Organizations' DEI values continue to grow within institutions while policies may be labeled only as inclusion.

7. Pays to Be E$G Says C-Suite.

Forecast: Standardized ESG metrics linked to executive compensation are now normal globally. Guess what? Currently, 81% of companies globally use ESG metrics in executive compensation plans, up from 68% in 2020. Back in the day, it used to be 0% of companies globally using ESG metrics in executive compensation plans.
Result: ESG executive incentive metrics shift from prevalence to quality.

6. Drought and Deluge: Water Everywhere and Nowhere Grows the Regenerative Blue Economy.

Forecast: From drought to deluge, increasing extreme weather continues to drive water scarcity affecting 1.8 billion people will only increase economic risks facing countries, organizations, and companies’ supply chains. For example, Finland's Water Stewardship Action Plan and others are emerging to address this critical issue on a national and international scale.
Given this, it is important to understand that the Blue Economy is not simply the ocean part of this Green Economy.
Result: Global ocean governance grew with the legal implementation of the High Seas Treaty. The treaty’s aim is to help conserve 30% of the world's oceans by 2030.

5. Round and Round: Circular Economy Iterates

Forecast: Circular economy models will continue to iterate with standardization of deposit return schemes (DRS) and extended producer responsibility (EPR) programs adopted in 2025 while forever chemicals will see increasing bans globally. Sustainable packaging innovations will accelerate, with companies moving away from single-use plastics.
Result: Extended producer responsibility (EPR) is now central to global packaging and circularity efforts, leading to market growth.

4. Nature Mean$ Money: Beware Biowashing

Forecast: Since the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF) was adopted in 2022, countries have committed to ambitious goals, like the "30x30" pledge, to protect 30% of land and marine areas by 2030.
But despite significant momentum, The EU’s Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive and Nature Restoration Law have further cemented these objectives, 85% of countries missed their COP16 NBSAP submission deadline. while nations like China have submitted National Biodiversity Strategies and Action Plans (NBSAPs) to solidify their commitments.
Major economies like Germany and the UK have not delivered updated plans, while the U.S. is not a signatory. Since now nature means money, organizations must address biowashing risks given increasing legal and reputational risks, parallel to the greenwashing risks facing climate commitments.
Result: Lawsuits against greenwashing grew.

3. Renewable Energy Growth Grows

Forecast: Despite the new US administration’s expected pro-drilling policies, demand for oil and gas will continue to both thin and weaken, as battery storage combined with renewables is increasingly cost competitive. Global solar and wind should rise from 13% at the end of 2023 to 30% in 2030.
In the US, 77% of announced clean energy projects since the IRA, representing 92% of investments, are in states where President-elect Trump prevailed in the 2024 election. 18 Republican Senators wrote a letter in August calling on house leadership to defend the IRA.
Proposed US tariffs on China may backfire and only strengthen China’s growing EV and green tech leadership.
Staying ahead of the curve, US tech companies (Microsoft, Amazon, and Google) have signed deals to gain access to reliable nuclear electricity 24/7 for their data centers.
Result: India and China are switching to renewable energy faster than many expected.
In 2025, nearly 60% of China's total power capacity came from renewable energy.
India added more than 40 GW of solar and wind capacity in 2025, for a total of 203 GW by November 2025

2. Climate Leadership Fills the US Vacuum

Forecast: The global economy is a bad, bad overachiever, sailing past 1.5ºC above pre-industrial levels in 2024. Climate is a global concern, not just a US concern.
While the current US administration announced new goal to reduce U.S. greenhouse gas emissions by 61% – 66% by 2035, on a 2005 basis, the incoming US administration intends to exit the Paris Agreement, furthering eroding the US as a trusted global partner across this and many other treaties, this opens the global leadership vacuum for other political leaders.
Amongst the mayhem and noise, BNEF’s US clean energy 2035 forecast under the new US administration shows 83% of renewable energy deployments when compared to Biden’s original IRA.
Result: China now produces more than 85% of the world's solar panels and dominates electric vehicle (EV) and energy storage markets.

1. Authoritarians Befriend Sustainability… To Stay in Power.