Sustainable finance does not lack ambition. It lacks investable transactions.
BwB’s, Stephanie Willcocks, attended Building Bridges 2026 in Geneva last week, held under the theme ‘Investable Solutions to Global Challenges’. Whether the topic was infrastructure, adaptation, nature or oceans, the sessions kept returning to one question: how do we move projects from developmental to transactional?
A few points stood out:
Risk is the bottleneck, not capital. Long-term savings are plentiful, but there are too few projects investors can price.
Mitigation and resilience belong on the same agenda. A grid, a coastline or a supply chain has to cut emissions and withstand shocks at the same time, and an asset that withstands shocks carries less risk and is easier to price.
Investors need projects they can compare. Common metrics, repeatable structures and pooled portfolios turn one-off projects into portfolios investors can allocate to.
Blended capital has to be built to step out. Guarantees and first-loss capital matter only if commercial capital can follow without them next time.
Most projects often stall between a good idea and a bankable deal. Closing that gap takes careful structuring, sound risk allocation, and governments, investors and developers working from the same playbook. It is the gap we focus on at BwB.