Topic: 2025 Sustainable Global Leaders Conference & First Green Industry and Sustainable Consumption Expo The 2025 Sustainable Global Leaders Conference took place from October 16 to 18 in Shanghai’s Huangpu District Expo Park. Tang Danquan, the Director of the Sustainable Solutions Team for ING's Wholesale Banking Asia-Pacific, attended and spoke at the event.
Tang Danquan introduced that ING is a bank headquartered in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. As a pioneer and practitioner in sustainable finance, ING has a history of 30 years in this field. Since releasing its first sustainability report in 1996 to becoming the first global systemically important bank to receive certification from the Science Based Targets Initiative by 2025, ING’s progress has seen the collective effort of its entire workforce. The bank has publicly committed to directing €150 billion annually towards sustainable financial products by 2027 to support the real economy's transition to net-zero emissions.
Regarding its sustainable development strategy, in addition to the €150 billion annual investment plan for 2027, ING has a unique Terra strategy that focuses on high carbon-emitting industries, promoting various transition plans as outlined in the publicly available 2025 Climate Progress Report.
In terms of client management, ING does not directly exclude high carbon-emitting industries; instead, it focuses on assisting these companies in their transition. The internal ESG.X platform evaluates client objectives and disclosures annually and provides climate disclosure scores to approximately 2,000 clients to support data-driven discussions on transformation.
For risk management, to prevent greenwashing risks, ING has strengthened internal guidelines, including enhancing client eligibility assessments and establishing a Sustainable Finance Quality Committee to supervise routine sustainable finance operations.
Tang Danquan noted that ING has recently assisted several leading enterprises across various industries in promoting sustainable development, with representative transactions including, but not limited to, helping Hong Kong Broadband issue HK$5.25 billion in sustainable development-linked loans in 2024 to address internal climate change mitigation and cybersecurity issues, as well as assisting China Merchants Capital in organizing US dollar green acquisition loans to support acquisitions in the fiber optic cable business. ING is dedicated to achieving sustainable development in collaboration with Chinese clients and providing diverse financial products to meet this objective.
Reflecting on the performance of major financial products represented by loans and bonds in the Chinese market over the past two years, Tang Danquan provided data and analysis. Since 2020, the issuance of sustainable financial instruments both domestically and internationally has approached US$800 billion, with China accounting for nearly 40%, highlighting its significant impact on the Asia-Pacific financial market. In terms of industry distribution, mainstream sectors continue to be financial institutions, government agencies, and public utilities, while sectors such as energy and consumer goods have actively joined in recent years, leveraging sustainable financial products to drive industry transitions.
In the bond market, it remains one of the main product categories for sustainable finance, with green bonds constituting the largest share; since 2021, the Hong Kong Monetary Authority has launched funding schemes for green and sustainable finance to subsidize enterprises issuing sustainable labeled bonds or organizing loans, effectively enhancing companies' enthusiasm for sustainable financing. In September 2025, China announced its absolute carbon reduction target for 2035, and against this backdrop, we anticipate that the growth momentum of the green bond market will continue.
The structure of the loan market differs from that of the bond market, with sustainable development-linked loans being mainstream in the entire labeled loan market. As banks engage more routinely with enterprises, understanding their credit performance and sustainable development status, sustainable development-linked loans can offer more flexible capital usage for enterprises, thus becoming a mainstream product. The market significantly declined in 2022-2023 due to some less aggressive KPIs and SPTs affecting mutual trust among enterprises. In the future, stricter product design will be needed to reduce greenwashing risks and enhance market credibility.
Regarding the future challenges and opportunities in sustainable development, China has announced its 2035 absolute carbon reduction target and a series of initiatives to achieve this goal, including increasing non-fossil energy consumption and enhancing wind and solar installation capacity. Various regions have issued a series of regulatory policies to promote more open and transparent disclosure of ESG information by enterprises. Meanwhile, the update of sustainable finance classification will also facilitate orderly market development.
Tang Danquan expressed that ING hopes to further assist high carbon-emitting enterprises in reducing emissions. For example, in the steel industry, it will utilize funding-raising products and sustainable development-linked products to help high carbon-emitting sectors achieve emission reductions, including but not limited to diminishing scope 1 to 3 emissions and increasing scrap steel utilization and renewable energy usage.
Tang Danquan emphasized that ING's role is not just to provide sustainable financial products; it will also offer more consulting services to clients at the early stages of sustainable transitions. For instance, clients who have yet to disclose carbon accounting can consider discussing potential ESG ratings and other diversified methods to aid in product design and implementation.
Finally, Tang Danquan stated that ING hopes to achieve its net-zero carbon emissions target while partnering with Chinese clients to promote the implementation of sustainable financial products and achieve sustainable development.