The Climate Transition Bond Guidelines (CTBG) published in November 2025 provide issuance level guidance that supplements the entity-level practices, actions and disclosures recommended by the Climate Transition Finance Handbook (CTFH) for issuers of sustainable bonds when raising funds for their climate transition strategy. The CTBG introduce a standalone Climate Transition Bond ("CTB") label designed to help (re)finance critical projects for achieving the goals of the Paris Agreement, especially from those in high-emitting sectors and/or with high-emitting activities ("high emission issuers").
Furthermore, the CTBG:
- Provide guidance on financing credible climate transition projects with a definition and safeguards, as well as a preliminary and non-exhaustive list of CT project categories in the Appendix.
- Build on existing guidance from the Principles to make recommendations for climate transition-themed sustainability-linked bonds (SLBs) from high-emission issuers.
- Include illustrative annexes to help issuers identify relevant official sector and market-based guidance and taxonomies, decarbonisation pathways and roadmaps, and resources on avoiding carbon lock-in.
The Guidelines will be reviewed and amended as necessary based on market feedback and developments. They may also be supported in the future by case studies and Q&As in the Guidance Handbook.
Climate Transition Bond Guidelines (CTBG) 2025
In order to meet the goals of the Paris Agreement on Climate Change to keep the global temperature rise this century well below 2°C above pre-industrial levels and to pursue efforts to limit the temperature increase even further to 1.5°C, significant financing is needed. To help facilitate these flows, the Climate Transition Finance Handbook, initially published in December 2020 and further updated in 2023, seeks to provide clear entity-level guidance and common expectations to capital markets participants on the practices, actions and disclosures to be made available when raising funds in debt markets for climate transition-related purposes. The 2025 version includes references to the Climate Transition Bond Guidelines and also contains a new annex (Annex 2) that provides an introduction to transition plan frameworks as well as tools and methodologies available to assess their credibility.
The Climate Transition Finance Handbook acts as additional guidance on entity-level for issuers seeking to utilise green bonds, sustainability bonds, sustainability-linked bonds or climate transition bonds towards the achievement of their climate transition strategy. When raising funds for climate transition-related purposes, issuers are encouraged to reference the recommendations outlined in the Climate Transition Finance Handbook in their reporting.
For additional information on how to interpret this guidance, especially for its practical application for transactions, as well as in the context of market developments and complementary initiatives, see the Guidance Handbook.
Climate Transition Finance Handbook 2025
Translations of the Climate Transition Finance Handbook
The following are translations of the 2020 edition of the CTFH unless otherwise specified. Further translations are in progress and are being published here as they become available.
The Methodologies Registry is a list of tools to specifically help issuers, investors, or financial intermediaries validate that their emission reduction trajectories/pathways are "science-based", specifically in the context of Element 3 of the Climate Transition Finance Handbook. We note that there are several initiatives all working to the same goal of supporting moves towards a net zero economy. There are many tools, methods, scenarios and initiatives available in the market and each play a role, and are often tailored towards different audiences. Usually, these resources complement each other and can be combined.
This list is dedicated purely towards the validation of specific emission reduction trajectories/pathways and is therefore not all encompassing. It does not seek to provide a comprehensive repository of all the complementary tools that an issuer, investor, or financial intermediary may also utilise to design, report, or guide the setting of those trajectories (Element 1 of the Climate Transition Finance Handbook).
This document should be seen as live, i.e. it will evolve over time. The pace of regulatory change and data harmonisation will continue to increase and as such pathway tools and methodologies will evolve and develop and see regular updates over the coming years.
We welcome feedback (to sustainabilitybonds@icmagroup.org) and will continue to monitor developments in the market and evaluate if updated guidance is warranted.
