Transition investment hit a record, but not where heavy industry needs it

Investment in the energy transition set another record last year. A closer look at where the money went shows that much of heavy industry was left behind.

A record year, unevenly shared

BloombergNEF's Energy Transition Investment Trends 2025 report finds that global energy transition investment reached a record $2.08 trillion in 2024, up 11% on the year before.

Most of that capital went to technologies that are already mature. Renewables, storage, electric vehicles and grids took 93% of the total, or $1.93 trillion, an increase of 14.7%.

The emerging sectors that heavy industry depends on moved the other way. Investment in them fell 23% to $154 billion. Hydrogen dropped 42% to $8.4 billion, while carbon capture and clean industry each roughly halved. Clean shipping was the bright spot, with investment quadrupling to $452 million.

What this means for fuel and industrial projects

For developers of clean fuels and industrial projects, the headline number can be misleading. A record year for the transition as a whole does not mean that capital is easy to find for a hydrogen plant, a carbon capture unit or a low-carbon process line. In practice, it is scarcer than the headlines suggest.

Investors in these projects look for evidence that the output will be bought. Additionally, they want to know that the emissions reductions a project delivers will be measured and claimed in a way that holds up.

Offtake from the value chain

Offtake from value-chain buyers can provide that evidence. When a company commits to buy lower-carbon fuel or materials from a project in its own supply chain, the project gains a customer, and the buyer reduces emissions inside its own Scope 3 footprint. This is insetting, not offsetting, and the difference is explained at carbon3.net/insets-vs-offsets.

Credits are issued to the project developer after independent verification, and Carbon3 records them once in its registry as inset credits. Each reduction then has one owner and one claim, so developers, buyers and investors can all see the same record.

Taken together, a committed buyer and a verified, single-claim record of the reductions strengthen the case a developer can put to investors in sectors that the record year largely passed by.

Claim treatment depends on the applicable reporting framework.

Source: BloombergNEF, Energy Transition Investment Trends 2025.