Signal | Issue 28 | November 2025

Nearly a decade after the Paris Agreement, the world has changed and the run-up to COP30 has taken on a different tone. Conversations, once dominated by pledges and grand visions, now revolve around the realities of what is happening in the real economy. In the energy-intensive industries of aluminium, cement, chemicals, steel, aviation and shipping, which remain the backbone of global growth, a quiet revolution has started. The latest data from our Global Project Tracker shows that momentum is building, clean industry is now measurable and visible. We’ve recorded strong numbers of final investment decisions so far in 2025 and many more projects are on the verge of joining them, ‘poised’ for financing. Explore the potential with:

• The latest round of Global Project Tracker data, hot off the press from São Paulo, now live online and with deep insights captured in the report, Clean industry: dawn of a new era
• New findings from the ITA and E3G showing how creating demand for clean products is key to unlocking investment in EU deep decarbonisation projects
• The debut of ITA’s India Project Support Programme and its India Insights Briefing: Unlocking India’s Clean Industrialisation Opportunity
• Build Clean Now launches in Australia with its first country workshop, bringing together policymakers, financiers, industry and community voices.

With the team spread across activities from Brazil to Australia, this edition of Signal skips a view from on the ground and gets straight to the news. Rest assured, before the end of the year, we’ll have insights from across the organisation reflecting on COP and conversations taking place around the globe.

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Clean industry is at the dawn of a new era: fresh data records 1,001 commercial-scale plants worldwide, with the stage set for near-term acceleration

Sophie Meerstadt and Faustine Delasalle launch the latest Global Project Tracker findings in Sao Paulo on Tuesday 4th November

For the first time, MPP’s Global Project Tracker records more than 1,000 commercial-scale clean industrial projects across all stages of development, signalling that the transformation of the world’s most energy-intensive industries is entering a new phase of momentum.

The latest figures, published on the 4th November and running up to October 2025, reveal 144 projects worldwide are now passed final investment decision (FID) stage. Of these 82 are operational and 62 have secured funding with 19 projects reaching FID so far this year, 12 based in China.

Progressing rapidly, China counts more than 200 clean industry projects in the tracker, 54 of which are already financed or operational, including 12 of the 19 projects that reached FID in the year to date. China has emerged as the clear leader in clean industry development, while the ‘new industrial sunbelt’ region and Europe are set to capture the next wave of opportunity if they act now.

Source: Global Project Tracker November 2025

A truly global economic opportunity

The data identifies clean industrial plants in development or operational across more than 70 countries, representing a nearly $2 trillion investment opportunity.  And as clean industry continues to gain momentum, the coming months are set to be even more transformational. Our most detailed analysis of the announced pipeline to date shows the potential for near-term acceleration through a group of projects poised for final investment decision and set to be shovel-ready in the coming months. This group of 70 projects (excluding Chinese projects) has a combined investment value of $140 billion.

Almost half of the group of ‘poised’ projects are located in the ‘new industrial sunbelt’ and over a third are in emerging economies where realising this opportunity could rapidly unlock significant benefits for sustainable economic growth, supply chain resilience and job creation.

Across all projects worldwide, a third are in the new industrial sunbelt, with 19 plants having secured investment and 343 in the planning stages.

Fuels and chemicals drive the transformation

Evidence from the Global Project Tracker points to clean fuel and chemical markets scaling fast driven by existing and expected policies from Europe to Asia. In our report, Clean industry: dawn of a new era, we speak to a number of project developers working on a range of fuel projects from converting municipal waste to jet-fuel, to a project harnessing the potential of Brazil’s existing deforested and degraded land to build the first ‘seed to fuel’ plant.

For more insights from our data and views from project developers around the world, download your copy of Clean industry: dawn of a new era.

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Unlock clean demand, boost EU industrial competitiveness

Europe can trigger billions in clean investment, build competitiveness and secure its industrial future by creating lead markets for clean materials, finds a new report from the ITA and E3G.

The report, Building the EU’s Clean Industrial Future: Unlocking Investment Through Lead Markets, shows that Europe’s competitive edge lies not only in technology or capital, but in creating market certainty.

EU policy makers have a narrow window in which to act as other regions gain ground, with China claiming early strategic advantages and emerging economies with abundant solar resources making up a third of announced projects.

A European lead market for clean materials and chemicals would accelerate the development of the $180 billion investment pipeline for European clean industrial projects identified by the Global Project Tracker.

Creating such a market is also vitally important as Europe’s fossil-based production is both environmentally and financially unsustainable: its steel, aluminium and ammonia are more expensive than global averages and more exposed to volatile energy markets because the EU imports most of the fossil fuels it uses in production.

And despite perceptions, clean production is affordable: For example, fully switching to clean steel and aluminium would increase the cost of manufacturing a car by just 1%, while using low-carbon cement in buildings would add only 2% to construction costs.

In contrast, driven by fossil fuel inflation in 2022, energy prices added ~six percentage points to EU headline inflation in one year, unlike the steady, predictable costs of cleaner materials.
 
Policies to overcome the biggest barrier

As recognised in the EU’s Clean Industrial Deal (CID), targeted policy interventions can enable lead markets for clean materials. The report identifies five key types of policy interventions:

• Product mandates in sectors where the private sector represents most demand, like automotive and fertilisers
• Targeted subsidies where higher costs associated with storage and transport for commodities could have social impacts. Ammonia, for example, is an essential ingredient in fertilisers that play a vital role in our food systems
• Measures to mitigate competitive risks where downstream products are exposed to international competition, such as ensuring equivalent standards are applied to imports or, where appropriate, local content requirements
• Public procurement in sectors where government works represent a high share of overall demand, like construction (buildings and infrastructure) and defence
• Voluntary labels to help differentiate clean products and build consumer and market awareness (although these are unlikely to create demand at scale as isolated measures)

Together, these measures would provide the long-term certainty that investors and developers require to scale up investment and build projects.

Access the full findings of the report on the ITA website.

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ITA launches India Project Support Programme

As a huge clean industry opportunity emerges in India, with a pipeline of 65 commercial-scale projects (53 near-zero and a further 12 low-carbon) worth over $150 billion in potential investment, the ITA has launched its India Project Support Programme to remove barriers and help turn this potential into operating plants.

India has an opportunity to enhance long-term economic resilience and energy security, capture export markets in clean materials, chemicals and fuels, and advance towards its climate goals.

However, to date, only six Indian projects have passed Final Investment Decision (FID) and just four become operational, due to structural challenges that continue to slow projects’ progress.

The most significant of these barriers include:

• A lack of premium demand, with limited long-term binding offtake for clean products
• Financing constraints as first-of-a-kind assets face higher perceived risks and capital costs, compounded by limited availability of early-stage funding
• Gaps in India’s supporting infrastructure, from grid and transmission readiness to port handling and shared logistics, which can extend timelines and increase costs
• Policy and regulatory uncertainty and a lack of sufficient incentive and mandate support

In response, the ITA’s India Project Support Programme is structured to deliver on exactly these priorities by aligning policy, demand, and capital to move the next wave of projects to the investment stage.

Highlighting bright spots, bridging barriers

The India Insights Briefing highlights what clean industry success looks like in India spotlighting existing projects: from the NGEL integrated Green Hydrogen Hub, developing multiple green chemicals, including ammonia and sustainable aviation fuels, to Jindal Steel (Angul) low-carbon steelmaking.

These are just a few of the more than 65 projects the ITA has mapped in the first phase of the India Project Support Programme (including the 53 that feature in the Global Project Tracker pipeline).

Moving into the second phase, which will run until December 2026, the ITA will select the projects it will support, undertake a series of interventions to design and implement solutions needed by projects to overcome their key barriers to FID and mobilise the necessary stakeholders to make those solutions a reality.

By supporting 10-15 projects towards FID in India and ideally reaching that milestone by COP31, ITA aims to enable more plants to be operational by 2030 and also benefit the wider pipeline of projects in the country, both current and future.

To get the full picture, download the India Insights Briefing now.

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Build Clean Now launches in Australia

The global Build Clean Now campaign has landed down under, with the team bringing together policymakers, financiers, industry leaders and community voices in Sydney, Australia for the first Build Clean Now country workshop.

Build Clean Now works to rally governments, industry and finance to accelerate clean industry progress – unlocking investment and huge opportunities that can benefit every country.

Globally, a nearly $2 trillion clean industry investment opportunity is going unclaimed. The workshop presented the challenge of identifying the practical next steps to unlock this in Australia: What can be done to fast-track clean industry final investment decisions (FID) in the next two years?

The 50+ changemakers first looked at the blockers for bankable clean fuel and material offtake:

• Two-thirds said there are insufficient customers willing to pay a premium voluntarily
• 45% pointed to missing mandates or low-carbon standards
• 36% highlighted weak carbon-price signals and incentives

That is to say: Australia’s supply-side ambition is strong but demand certainty hasn’t caught up, and without secure sources of demand, developers stay stuck in pre-FID limbo.

The way forward

MPP’s Rachel Howard during the launch of Build Clean Now in Australia

The changemakers focused their attention on two core levers to accelerate Australian progress:

1. Unlocking secure offtake through low carbon standards, selecting government procurement opportunities across the region and advancing market facilitation tools such as clean commodity certificates which could bring forward transactions.
2. Leveraging innovative finance solutions that can de-risk projects, including government guarantees, contingency facilities, regional export finance consortia and transferable tax credits which could fund upfront capex costs.

And the ideas aren’t just theoretical: Participants from the first country workshop left with a practical toolkit of solutions for turning uncertain offtake into bankable, investment-ready deals.
 
To explore the Build Clean Now initiative and join future country workshops, visit the website.

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FIGURES IN FOCUS

Global pipeline breakdown: 1000+ clean industrial projects by sector 

More than 1,000 commercial-scale clean industry projects have now been identified across the world’s most energy-intensive industries.

Source: Global Project Tracker November 2025

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UPCOMING EVENTS – JOIN US IN BELÉM

Driving Climate Action through Industrial Decarbonization  14th November, 12.00-13.00 BRT, Blue Zone, Special event room Paraná, hosted by ITA, UNFCCC and UNIDO

• Industrial decarbonisation must be addressed in a coordinated way, with governments, industry, finance, and international organisations working together to ensure that the transition is just, inclusive, and economically beneficial for all. Sharing best practices, leveraging renewable energy resources, and aligning policies across borders will be essential to maximising global impact and avoid locking in carbon-intensive infrastructure.

Showcase of Highlighted Results & Solutions – Clean industry: real projects, real progress, real bright spots   15th November, 11:00-12:00 BRT, Blue Zone, Axis 1 Thematic Room, hosted by ITA, LeadIT, AFID

• The clean industry transition is no longer a distant ambition, it is unfolding now, reshaping economies and redefining industrial leadership. This high-level COP30 side event will spotlight the accelerating momentum of clean industrial development across energy-intensive sectors, showcasing real-world examples of policy innovation, investment breakthroughs and collaborative action. Drawing on the latest insights and data, the session will highlight how coordinated policy frameworks, technology co-development and partnerships are enabling investments in industrial transformation. Participants will hear from leaders across government, industry, and finance and explore how clean industrial development is becoming a competitive advantage—especially for countries and companies that move early. The session will celebrate real progress and bright spots.
• Speakers include, among others: Simon Stiell, Executive Secretary, UNFCCC, Jochen Flasbarth, German State Secretary; Tariye Gbagedesin, CEO, Climate Investment Funds

Build Clean Now to Create Stronger, Resilient Economies: seizing the opportunity and reaping the benefits   15th November, 13.30-14.30 BRT, Blue Zone, We Mean Business Coalition Pavilion PV-C87, hosted by ITA

• A high-impact, industry-focused event in the Business Pavilion, concentrating on the opportunities and momentum for clean industry. The session will cover topics such as what we can learn from the journey so far and how clean industry initiatives are benefitting customers and local communities? How have partnerships contributed to success?  What would they want to see done differently in the future?  What are the roadblocks to clean industrial progress and how can we address them effectively and efficiently? How can corporate ambition inspire and accelerate government action? 

Financing the Green Industrial Transition: Building Shared Infrastructure and Lowering the Cost of Capital  15th November, 16.30-17.30 BRT, Blue Zone, Global Renewables Hub, hosted by Green Hydrogen Organisation, ITA and Climate Analytics

• Delivering Real Zero, a fossil-free energy and industrial system powered by renewables and green hydrogen, requires financing tools that make clean industry investable everywhere.  Green hydrogen made with renewables offers a viable pathway to achieve Real Zero and, ​​ alongside direct electrification, can help deliver a fully fossil-free energy system. While clean industry transformation holds large economic opportunities, with an investment potential of $1.8 trillion USD,  finance remains the decisive barrier to projects reaching Final Investment Decision (FID). The cost of capital in emerging markets is up to five times higher than in OECD economies. Without concessional and blended solutions, first-mover hydrogen, fertiliser and fuel projects will stall. This session will bring together MDBs, donors and private developers to chart how to finance the green industrial transition. Focus areas: shared infrastructure, de-risking tools, and regional cooperation in North Africa and beyond.

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The Mission Possible Partnership Team

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