New Name, Same Mission: The Sierra Club's Sustainable Finance Campaign

To better reflect the broader scope of our work to combat the climate crisis and protect the economy, the Sierra Club is renaming the Fossil-Free Finance campaign to the Sustainable Finance campaign.

While challenging fossil fuel financing remains a core priority of the campaign’s advocacy efforts, our goals have also long included pushing to accelerate funding for clean energy solutions and harnessing investor power to hold corporate polluters accountable for their impacts. This is the work we’ve been doing, and now our name better reflects it.

The Sierra Club’s 2030 Strategic Framework includes a goal to “Shift trillions of public and private dollars from the fossil fuel economy to restore clean air and water, provide affordable clean energy, support good paying jobs, and increase the ability of communities to be resilient to climate disruptions.” 

The Sustainable Finance campaign is helping to achieve that vision through a multi-dimensional strategic approach to driving climate action in the financial sector, which includes:

  • Challenging fossil fuel financing: When investors and banks reduce financing for fossil fuel development, corporate polluters can face significant barriers like limited capital and higher costs, which can halt harmful projects or push companies to adopt more sustainable practices.
  • Accelerating funding for clean energy: Increasing funding for climate solutions supports companies and projects that advance clean energy and supports credible transition activities such as closing heavily polluting plants, adopting cleaner technologies, or building cleaner supply chains. Greater access to capital enables more sustainable businesses to grow, innovate, and drive the transition to a low-carbon economy.
  • Harnessing investor power: Investor engagement plays a key role in holding corporate polluters accountable — which is especially important for sectors pivotal to the energy transition, such as electric utilities, automakers, steel producers, banks, and others. By demanding greater transparency and credible transition plans, investors can push corporations to cut emissions, clean up their practices, and reduce the financial risks they pose to our communities.

By making progress toward these ambitious goals, the Sustainable Finance campaign is working to play a meaningful role in reducing global emissions and mitigating the enormous financial threats posed by climate change. We hope that the campaign name helps convey this forward-looking, solution-oriented approach to addressing this global emergency in a way that builds a safer and more prosperous future for all.

In 2025 and beyond, the campaign will ramp up efforts to mobilize institutional investors — including public pensions across the U.S. — to treat the climate crisis as the financial threat that it is, in order to protect the economy and workers’ long-term savings.

Learn more about the Sierra Club's Sustainable Finance campaign, find our latest updates, and opportunities for action. If you have questions or comments, please email sustainablefinance@sierraclub.org.