Spotlight on the Climate Journalism Award winners: Fighting climate misinformation, 'How big finance greenwashes climate crisis culprits'

Although the European Union has created several regulations, like the Sustainable Finance Disclosure Regulation (SFDR) for full transparency on these investments, the criteria to obtain this have crucial “gaps” for classifying those that are really sustainable. 

In the European financial sector, as highlighted by this in-depth investigation by Stefano Valentino and Giorgio Michalopoulos, asset managers label key financial funds as environmentally friendly, using loopholes in regulations and misleading practices with questionable criteria. 

With the help of a comprehensive and thorough dataset, the article exposes a type of greenwashing which has the goal of gaining public trust, specifically among consumers, in order to keep maintaining high profits, attracting more investors, all avoiding strict regulations.