9 eco developments in 2025

Hope & eco developments

It’s 2025. People are getting back to work and onto their to-do lists and goals for 2025. Whether they are work related or personal, whether they are short or long-term goals, the new year is a fresh start full of hope.

I have several hopes and wishes for this year. One of them is for people to become more mindful of living life in a more eco-friendly way. When everyone does a bit we can get far!

To that end, what are the eco developments to look out for this year?

Unfortunately, good things rarely seem to come without the bad. We need to watch how the shaky geopolitical landscape and the rise of right-wing governments will continue or shut down ecological initiatives.

Cue, Trump. Although, even here there is hope; the Exxon CEO urges Trump to stay in the Paris Climate Agreement.

1.💸Climate finance

After the ‘finance’ COP29, let’s see how some of the pledged $300 billion will be allocated this year to real eco projects in developing countries. These countries are hit hardest by climate change, yet developed countries create the most emissions.

2025 will most likely see a rise in sustainable and ESG (Environmental, Social and Governance) finance. Regulatory changes and updates are coming in 2025. Financial institutions must comply and take the lead to innovate here.

Europe is leading the way. Examples include:

ESG-fund guidelines were released in 2024 with specific categories: sustainable, transition, and non-categorized. This aims to increase investor clarity and avoids greenwashing
Corporate sustainability due diligence became official in 2024. The next step will see European countries turning this into law, so 2025 will be crucial to get agreements going. Ultimately companies will be obligated to make supply chains more sustainable
- Let’s hope tax breaks will be part of the plan (credits/subsidies/tax reductions)!

BlackRock implemented a ‘transition’ investing-strategy last year. But its commitment is dubious as greenwashing lawsuits have already been brought against the firm claiming that sustainable-marked investments in fact went to fossil fuels…
(Sources: Oxford Economics, EY, Skadden, ESG News, ESG Today)

2.📋Sustainability reporting

As Sustainability Disclosure Requirements (SDRs) are put into place, companies will have to follow.

In Europe, the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD) was implemented in 2023, so companies need to publish such reports from 2025

Also, in 2025 look out for the International Court of Justice deciding on the legal obligations that countries will have to follow to safeguard the environment. This will make sustainability reporting all the more important.

Again, let’s hope that governments will follow suit with incentives when companies are doing all the things to comply.
(Sources: EC, IUCN)

3.💦Water management

Different parts of the world will be ramping up water management as a key eco development. This means reducing water use, improving water and irrigation systems, and building/expanding plants to create access to more fresh water.

Mid-2025, the Catalonia region of Spain will start construction to expand the desalination plant, Tordera II. This expansion comes several years earlier than originally planned.

Over in Pakistan, water management is part of the Pakistan Vision of 2025. The country is severely affected by water shortages due to climate change, water mismanagement and a growing population.
(Sources: ESG News, UNDP)

4.♾️Circular economy

We have all heard of the reduce, reuse & recycle mantra. This is key in a circular economy. Creating a more circular economy applies to individuals and businesses alike. 2025 will hopefully see a step towards this.

Circular relates to a lot of other things (including product life cycle and resources) but it also depends on choice. For example, we can all choose to avoid plastic.

Education will be crucial to achieve a circular economy.

5.🥤Single-use plastics

Earth Day did a big push to reduce single-use plastics with their 2024 Plant vs Plastic campaign.

Countries all over the world have some sort of single-use-plastic phase-out goal whether it’s all packaging (France by 2040), or its use in federal agencies (US by 2035)

The EU’s Directive on single-use plastics will set more ambitious targets for 2025 that companies have to hit. But, unfortunately talks failed to agree on a legally binding Global Plastics Treaty in December 2024. So, 2025 will see negotiations resume.
(Sources: MTE, WWF, EC, earth.org)

6.🌱Nature-based solutions

Restoration and conservation projects all over the world will continue in 2025, for example:

Progress on the Great Green Wall in Africa
Indonesia’s and China’s mangrove restoration and replanting initiatives
Global coral reef restoration from Australia to Hawaii – this is an extremely intricate process. Various methods are tested and implemented
A focus will be on a shift to agroforestry. 2025 will see Africa embrace this more, after projects such as Ethiopia’s Sustainable Land Management. Lessons learnt need to be implemented
Restore freshwater ecosystems, including the DANUBE4all project in central Europe

UNEP says that private finance for nature-based solutions is extremely low at 17%, and must be doubled in 2025.
(Other sources: one earth, Science, ScienceDirect, Mongabay, Forest News, CPDR)

7.⚡Renewable energy push for eco developments

This year’s theme for Earth Day will be on renewable energy: Our Power Our Planet
There will be solar power advancements, including bifacial panels that capture sunlight from several sides, and photocatalysis (see below)
Offshore wind capacity is projected to grow by a third in 2025 globally, but especially in Europe and China (while decreasing in the US with Trump’s re-election)
The scale-up of green hydrogen to decarbonise heavy industry and transport
- How does this work? The hydrogen part comes from splitting water, where hydrogen and water molecules are separated. The green part comes from using renewable sources for the energy needed to split the water molecules. An efficient energy source seems to be photocatalysis, which is a transformed solar energy
New energy storage i.e. less harmful batteries
- Stepping away from lithium-ion batteries (needs earth minerals)
- Increasing solid-state batteries (replaces the liquid in batteries with a solid material). These batteries are small and light
Increasing commercially available geothermal energy – hot rock from the earth’s crust

(Sources: EarthDay, ScienceDirect, Science, NewScientist)

8.🅾️Net-Zero needs a lot of eco developments

To get to net-zero emissions by 2050, this year will see more regulations and actions towards a net-zero industry. Including the EU’s Net Zero Industry Act (NZIA) that entered mid-2024 to speed up net-zero goals.
(Source: Ashurst)

9.🤖 AI – the good & the bad

This year will see AI advancements that will help with eco developments, including:

Optimising supply chains
Helping with nature conservation. Here, AI systems can give lots of data on animals and their behaviour
Modeling climate systems, this includes accurate and early weather prediction. For example, Google Deepmind’s AI tool accurately predicted Hurricane Beryl’s path in the summer of last year
Rise of smart-energy grids to optimise supply and demand e.g. AI will be able to predict needs and integrate renewables into existing energy sources

But the amount of resources needed to power AI is huge, i.e. energy to run systems and water for cooling them. But also, more data centres are needed and AI systems are always on, they can’t be switched off.
Will 2025 see some improvements here?
(Sources: Saiwa, Bloomberg, World Economic Forum, EC)

Now let’s see what real eco developments 2025 will bring. 🌱

See you at the next chapter! 🙌

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