Proximo In-Depth: The 2025 Festive Trends

The Festive Trends podcast is a firm fixture on the Proximo calendar, though 2024’s episode slipped into early 2025. Still, after a busy year, it was possible to discern a lot of new factors at play in the global project finance market.

The format of the discussion is time-honoured. Proximo’s three panellists take turns to pick trends generated by Proximo’s editorial team and Flow, its powerful AI tool. The order they pick them in is decided by the quality of their Zoom backdrop. Each panellist can pick one trend of their own.

The panellists were:

Ian Cogswell, a senior adviser at Portland Advisers, and a founder of CCC Training

Michael Whalen, managing director and energy and infrastructure finance adviser at Berkeley Research Group.

Jonathan Yellen, investment director at Climate Investment.

The trends they chose, in order, were:

1. Data centres rule everything around us (Jon). The most obvious trend. Data centre volumes have exploded, and the power needs of data centres dominate discussion in the energy space. The runaway central trend of 2025 - though worries about a bubble are strengthening.
2. The US is even more number one than it ever was (Michael) The combination of data centres, legacy renewables projects and LNG meant that the US extended its lead in project finance in 2025.
3. Going back to the future with CCGTs and LNG (Ian). Conventional power’s recovery is taking a while to warm up, but LNG is back with a vengeance. There’s been a recognition that gas needs another look, and it’s possible that merchant LNG could take off soon
4. Mega projects are mega-sized, not mega-complicated (Tom)  Banks are putting a lot of money out the door. But a lot of it is going towards proven and de-risked assets. For more complicated projects, banks turn to government and supranational lenders.
5. The emergence or re-emergence of defence as an infrastructure sector (Jon - his own trend) Several financial sponsors are looking at this area seriously. It is not just military housing but a variety of asset types.
6. Governments are using loans to projects as economic levers (Michael).  Governments have always used loans to priority projects to flatter their national accounts. But entities like the DoE LPO in the US and NWF in the UK are ramping up strongly.
7. New technologies are creating new demands (Ian - his own trend). Bringing technologies like lithium - a critical mineral - and geothermal brings both opportunities and challenges. 
8. Multi-sourcing takes root in global project finance (Tom). We are seeing a lot of ECA and DFI debt appearing alongside commercial banks - even in developed markets.
9. Supply chain resilience worries are the new inflation worries (Jon) Jon does not completely agree. There were some post COVID issues with difficult projects, and now there is the impact of tariffs. Governments probably need to balance security and costs 
10. Future trends for banker fashion attire. (Michael - his own trend) Here’s hoping for a return of more formal - or maybe at least more flamboyant - banker attire in 2026
11. Long tenors, who needs 'em? (Ian). There has been a pronounced trend towards shorter tenors, but a project with a longer-dated debt base is a more robust one.
12. Renewables development facilities take off in Europe (Tom - his own trend). They have been a feature of US project finance for several years, but are taking off in Europe alongside the growth of financial sponsors in European renewables.

Interested in finding out more?