Our Sustainability Journey

We hosted the 2017 Sustainable Finance Innovation Forum to discuss the latest market developments and innovations that are defining the next frontier of sustainable economic growth.

After achieving our initial goal of financing and investing $40 billion in clean energy, we put the number in context as we look ahead to our expanded target: $150 billion by 2025.

In 2015, we updated our Environmental Policy Framework to build on our decade-long progress and establish a roadmap for ongoing environmental leadership and sustainable economic growth.

We led several innovative transactions to expand the green bond market – from the first century green bond and the first green energy market securitization to the first Latin America renewable project green bond.

We structured several public-private partnerships to finance much needed water infrastructure and hosted a summit focused on financial solutions in the water sector.

During a time when the clean energy markets were volatile, we established a target to deploy $40 billion of capital to advance the clean energy sector over the following decade. In 2015, we expanded our target to $150 billion by 2025.

Through GSAM, we joined a global network of investors to advance our commitment to environmental, social and governance integration across our investment platform.

We established a group within Investment Banking to lead the growing clean energy sector. We have been the leading financier helping clean energy scale up globally.

We established a new goal to achieve carbon neutrality in our operations by 2020 by adopting a carbon reduction framework. In 2015, we expedited our commitment by five years and will be carbon neutral starting from 2015 onwards.

We launched a global equity product to create investment opportunities that meet sustainability criteria.

We launched GS SUSTAIN at the UN Global Compact Leaders Summit. GS SUSTAIN incorporates ESG criteria into the fundamental analysis of companies to identify long-term outperformers.

We launched the Center for Environmental Markets with three partnerships focused on researching market solutions and informing policy to address climate change. Since then, we have contributed $13 million to additional partnerships and pilot projects focused on clean energy, energy and resource efficiency, to water.

Our original Environmental Policy Framework articulated our conviction that a healthy environment is a foundation for a strong and sustainable economy and our commitment to leveraging market solutions to address critical environmental challenges.