Review of Sustainable Finance: Key Trends and Research Agenda

The study presents a comprehensive approach to reviewing achievements in sustainable finance, identifying research trends and directions, key problem areas, the geographical origins of publications, keyword clusters, and the research methods applied by scholars in this field. The analysis is based on a dataset of 9218 publications indexed in the Web of Science and Scopus databases covering the period 2012–2025. The methodological framework combines bibliometric analysis, text mining, and topic modelling techniques, including the Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA) method, supported by visualization tools. These methods enable the identification of publication dynamics, the geographic distribution of research activity, thematic clusters, and the dominant research methods used in the literature. The results indicate a significant increase in academic interest in sustainable finance, particularly after 2018. The main research trends identified include green finance, climate finance, renewable energy financing, ESG investing, sustainability reporting, and the development of green financial instruments. The analysis also highlights the growing role of innovation and financial institutions in supporting sustainability transitions. In addition, the study identifies emerging research areas such as blue finance and green banking, providing a broader perspective on the evolving structure of sustainable finance research. To the best of our knowledge, this is the only review paper that approaches sustainable finance in such a comprehensive manner, particularly by incorporating the emerging concept of blue finance.