Tracking Promises: How Pre-Issuance Intent Translates into Real-World Allocation

In last week’s article, we broke down which sectors drive capital in Europe’s green bond market and how those sectoral priorities shape actual allocation. This week, we follow that thread further — turning our attention to how green bond issuers frame their commitments at the point of issuance, and how that compares with what’s ultimately delivered. 

We reviewed 222 frameworks and 78 post-issuance impact reports across the same 684 bonds from 126 issuers. The aim wasn’t just to spot differences, but to understand what those differences reveal about allocation behaviour, preferred categories, and the signals embedded in how issuers communicate and course-correct over time. 

Mentions vs. Money: Two Different Realities 

First, we looked at category mentions in green bond frameworks versus post-issuance reports. It’s a reflection of issuer intention and, to some extent, narrative strategy. Unsurprisingly, Renewable Energy, Green Buildings, and Clean Transportation show up as the most commonly cited categories both for pre- and post-issuance allocation. But Renewable Energy is the only category that actually sees an increase in mentions post-issuance - a sign, perhaps, of ease of execution and tangibility of measurement. 

On the flip side, social impact categories like Access to Essential Services and Affordable Housing, despite being mentioned in frameworks, drop to zero in impact reports. Whether this reflects feasibility constraints, changing priorities, or a lack of measurability, the takeaway is clear: it’s not always clear if a commitment will pass the test of measurability when we talk about allocation. 

Fig 1: A Measure of Issuer Commentary

What the Capital Says 

Now we shift from narrative to numbers, i.e., actual allocation across categories as a percentage of total Use of Proceeds. Here, the Green Buildings category is seen as the only one in which there’s an increase in promised versus projected allocation, increasing its share by over 20%. That swing likely reflects execution readiness or regulatory clarity, rather than storytelling. Meanwhile, Renewable Energy, while still the largest allocation category overall, sees a 7.4% drop post-issuance. Clean Transportation and Energy Efficiency remain relatively stable, showing minimal changes of about ~1% between pre & post allocation amounts. 

Interestingly, Climate Change Adaptation surfaces as the highest-funded category outside the core four, despite being rarely cited in pre-issuance documents but this driven exclusively by government institutions’ mandates and programs. 

Fig 2: A Measure of Issuer Allocation 

 

What Divergence Tells Us 

The contrast between the two Graphs matters. One tracks mentions and the other tracks money. And that gap tells us something deeper: some categories are easy to talk about, but hard to fund. Others, like Green Buildings, quietly dominate when the money actually moves. These divergences are not necessarily red flags, but potentially rather, indicators of which categories are execution-friendly, and which remain aspirational. The difference for one category – Renewable Energy, is a curious one however. How do mentions in post allocation reports for the category increase, but $ volumes drop? One could postulate a few theories for this: 

1. Delays in projects execution. 

2. Strategic re-allocation of funds towards adjacent categories like Green Buildings, Clean Transportation & Energy Efficiency. 

3. Retroactive tagging of projects as ‘Renewable Energy’ despite a change in funding strategy. 

Any of these theories could drive this particular trend, showcasing that even one of the safest categories can face unique challenges in fund allocation strategy. Over-communicated due to its narrative power, but under-allocated in some cases due to logistical, financial, or pipeline-related frictions. 

The data overall, also underscores another, more structural reality. As alluded to in our previous post, categories like Circular Economy, Pollution Prevention & Control, and Environmental Sustainable Management of Resources remain on the periphery - not for lack of relevance, but because they’re hard to measure, harder to finance, and often missing the institutional competence, infrastructure and/or incentives to bring them to market at scale. 

Who Drives Allocation? 

Much of the capital flow concentration we observe can be traced back to a few large issuers shaping sectoral trends. In the financial sector, institutions like KfW are driving multi-category investment, playing a significant, and in many cases exclusive, role in categories like Sustainable Water, Renewable Energy, Pollution Prevention & Control, Green Buildings, Environmental Resource Management, Energy Efficiency, and the Circular Economy. 

In the utilities space, E.On leads allocations, with the sector as a whole contributing more than any other toward Renewable Energy and Biodiversity. It’s a clear case of capital following infrastructure. Meanwhile, in the Real Estate sector, Gecina SA sets the tone with concentrated deployment in Green Buildings - perhaps the most bankable and compliance-friendly category for real estate-linked issuers. 

Looking Ahead 

So what does all of this tell us? It tells us that while the green bond market is growing in scale and maturity, it’s still shaped by feasibility, not just ambition. We see tight clustering around a few dominant categories, and steep drop-offs where complexity or ambiguity rise. It also shows us that there may be areas of underfunded opportunity for investors going forward.  As market volatility increases and investors grow more cautious, the pressure to demonstrate not just green intent but green delivery will only rise. In a high-rate, low-tolerance environment, transparency around actual allocation will become more than a reporting obligation, it should also ideally become a credibility threshold. While the current climate may accelerate the shift toward categories with measurable outcomes, the risk here is that this also may mean the pushing of long-horizon or complex-impact themes even further out of scope. 

In future posts, we’ll dive into how these allocation trends stack up against SDG claims, how these stack up against regulatory movements and investor preferences. At SFI, we’re building tools that help track those gaps in real time, because only by seeing what gets funded can we begin to shift what gets prioritized.