What is ESG?
Environmental, social and governance criteria, or ESG, is a framework companies use to evaluate their sustainability. Environmental factors look at the conservation of the natural world, social factors examine how a company treats people both inside and outside the company and governance factors consider how a company is run. Here are some examples of what each ESG category covers:
| Environmental | Social | Governance |
| Carbon emissions Air and water pollution Deforestation Green energy initiatives Waste managementWater usage |
Employee gender and diversity Data security Customer satisfaction Company sexual harassment policies Human rights at home and abroad |
Diversity of board members Political contributions Executive pay Large-scale lawsuits Internal corruption Lobbying |
ESG investing
ESG investing is a form of sustainable investing that considers environmental, social and governance factors to judge an investment’s financial returns and its overall impact. An investment’s ESG score measures the sustainability of an investment in those specific categories.
According to the US SIF Foundation’s 2022 Sustainable Investing Overview, U.S. there are $8.4 trillion dollars in sustainable investing assets.
ESG investing benefits
Aside from having a more sustainable investment portfolio, ESG has other compelling benefits.
Potential for high returns
A 2019 white paper produced by the Morgan Stanley Institute for Sustainable Investing compared the performance of sustainable funds with traditional funds and found that from 2004 to 2018, the total returns of sustainable mutual and exchange-traded funds were similar to those of traditional funds. Other studies have found that ESG investments can outperform conventional ones.
JUST Capital ranks companies based on factors such as whether they pay fair wages or take steps to protect the environment. It created the JUST U.S. Large Cap Diversified Index (JULCD), which includes the top 50% of companies in the Russell 1000 (a large-cap stock index) based on those rankings. Since its inception, the index has returned 15.94% on an annualized basis compared with the Russell 1000’s 14.76% return.
Lower risk
The same Morgan Stanley study found that sustainable funds consistently showed a lower downside risk than traditional funds, regardless of asset class. The study found that during turbulent markets, such as in 2008, 2009, 2015 and 2018, traditional funds had significantly larger downside deviation than sustainable funds, meaning traditional funds had a higher potential for loss.
ESG funds have even managed to post strong performance during 2020. Of 26 sustainable index funds analyzed by investment research company Morningstar in April, 24 outperformed comparable traditional funds in the first quarter of 2020 (and the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic).
ESG investing vs. socially responsible investing vs. CSR
Another common term for the process of creating a sustainable investment portfolio is socially responsible investing, or SRI. While SRI and ESG both seek to build more responsible portfolios, there are a few differences between the two terms.
ESG is a system for how to measure the sustainability of a company or investment in three specific categories: environmental, social and governance. Socially responsible investing, ethical investing, sustainable investing and impact investing are more general terms. Often, “socially responsible investments” are measured using an ESG-based grading system.
Historically, certain forms of sustainable investing varied in how they created their portfolios. For example, SRI used an exclusionary-only approach to filter out investments some considered immoral, like tobacco or alcohol. ESG investing excluded those same investments, but also included companies deemed to be creating a positive impact.
The larger the world of sustainable investing has grown, the more those terms (among others) have been used interchangeably. You’ll see providers who offer a “socially responsible” portfolio that includes ESG funds (as opposed to just excluding certain investments), and ones with the same title that use a solely exclusionary approach. That is why it’s important to look into the methodology used to create a portfolio — no matter what it’s called.
CSR, or corporate social responsibility, is a business practice taken on by a company to improve a local community, the environment or society at large. Beyond helping their cause, CSR initiatives can improve a company’s public opinion. CSR initiative planners may take ESG factors into consideration when mapping out their CSR strategy.