Sina Finance's ESG Rating Center offers 14 ESG services, including information, reports, training, and consulting, to assist listed companies in promoting ESG concepts and enhancing their sustainable development performance. The 30th United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP30), concluded in November 2025, once again brought the future trajectory of global climate governance into the international spotlight. Confronted with escalating climate challenges and a massive funding gap, the core of discussions centered on how to move beyond consensus and drive practical climate action and cooperation. Against this backdrop, Sina Finance, in partnership with the Green Finance 60 Forum (GF60), launched the 1.5°C Talk dialogue series. This initiative aims to provide the industry and public with in-depth insights on the tenth anniversary of the Paris Agreement and the challenges of the 1.5°C goal, thereby helping to raise climate ambition and spur concrete action. In this edition, we spoke with Sean Kidney, a member of the European Commission's High-Level Expert Group on Sustainable Finance and CEO of the Climate Bonds Initiative (CBI).
Sean Kidney emphasized that COP30 provided a future roadmap for global climate action and climate finance. However, in his view, rather than expecting rapid and high-level global consensus, a more realistic development path involves strengthening regional connectivity and forming "coalitions of the willing" to advance more bilateral and multilateral cooperative agreements, thereby steadily progressing climate action. He highlighted that initiatives such as China's push for a green trade agreement with ASEAN are examples of cooperation models likely to emerge more frequently; other practical and actionable examples within the COP framework include EU-Brazil trade cooperation in sustainable agriculture and potential collaboration between India and the Congo on critical resources.
Sean Kidney also noted that the COP framework contains specific mechanisms that can be advanced immediately. Citing Article 6 of the Paris Agreement as an example, he explained that this provision allows countries with established carbon markets, like Japan, to engage in emissions reduction transfers with nations possessing significant forest resources, such as Indonesia. He pointed out that related cooperation and institutional development are currently progressing in parallel.
In the discussions at the COP30 Belém Climate Conference, transition and resilience emerged as two core themes.
Sean Kidney believes that financing the low-carbon transition for high-carbon industries is gradually becoming a consensus concept in Japan, Singapore, China, and other Asian nations and regions. He observed that some Chinese companies and financial institutions have begun systematically formulating transition plans, with many localities issuing regional-level transition finance guidance. Simultaneously, he noted the rapid development of Japan's transition bond market and other Asian economies quickly following suit. He stressed that for "hard-to-abate" sectors like steel and cement, clear transition frameworks are crucial for decarbonization, citing the transition catalogue for Hebei's steel industry in China as a representative practice. He stated that such experiences urgently need broader exchange and sharing to help countries develop executable transition pathways and sovereign transition plans tailored to their national contexts.
In his view, climate resilience is equally as important as transition. He underscored that the tangible impacts of climate change are increasingly evident, with global average temperatures consistently approaching the 1.5°C threshold in recent years and a marked increase in the frequency of climate events such as storms, floods, droughts, and extreme heat. He argued that enhancing the resilience of societies, communities, economic systems, and critical infrastructure not only helps reduce casualties and asset losses but also mitigates default risks in debt capital markets and strengthens the long-term security of pension and insurance funds, making it an indispensable direction for addressing climate risks.
Sean Kidney pointed out that capital markets play a pivotal role in advancing global climate action. He recalled that a research report from the People's Bank of China a decade ago clearly stated that relying solely on public finance is insufficient to address climate and environmental challenges, necessitating the systematic mobilization of global private capital. He indicated that in recent years, green bonds and climate bonds have evolved into significant financing tools in markets like Japan, Europe, India, and Canada, not only clarifying priority areas for climate investment but also continuously attracting policymakers and investors to implement actionable projects.
However, he emphasized that the climate funding gap remains enormous. He stated that the annual global financial need for climate mitigation, transition, and resilience building is approximately $10 to $15 trillion, implying the effective mobilization of around $150 trillion in long-term savings while ensuring the long-term safety and stable returns of pension and insurance funds. He noted that discussions at COP30 featured multilateral development banks and the private sector proposing various solutions and sharing practical experiences, indicating that driving climate investment and finance through systemic design and multi-stakeholder collaboration is gradually becoming a standard pathway for the global financial system.
He further analyzed that over the past decade, China has accumulated systematic practical experience by continuously advancing the improvement of financial policy frameworks, financial product innovation, blended finance mechanisms, and incentive explorations at both national and regional levels. He believes that the approaches China has developed in building a green financial system and nurturing emerging green industries provide important lessons for the global green transition. He pointed out that the significant decline in solar power costs in Africa and the rapid increase in global electric vehicle market penetration are largely attributable to China's sustained, large-scale investments over the past ten to twenty years, which have accelerated the development of green finance and green industries worldwide.
Sean Kidney stated that China and its financial regulators have played a crucial role in this process but believes they can do more. Analyzing from the perspectives of capital scale and industrial transition progress, he estimated that roughly only one-fifth of the task has been completed thus far. The coming years will still require leveraging strong manufacturing capabilities, sustained and stable government commitment, and the systemic greening of debt capital markets. He concluded that the current global stock of green, climate, and sustainable bonds is approximately $6 trillion, with a medium-to-long-term goal of increasing this to around $60 trillion. He stressed that only through concerted efforts from all parties can this gap be gradually bridged, ultimately achieving a scaled global green transition.
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