ImaginaryFreedom7

ImaginaryFreedom7 t1_iu10ypm wrote

Grab someone off the street and ask them what they think ESG is and they will more than likely describe impact investing and allocating dollars to sustainable investments. That’s not what ESG integration is. It’s using ESG related information/data to help inform investment decisions and how the data might affect risk and return. A Sustainable Fund’s objective may be to have better ESG characteristics than its benchmark. Just because chevron or other energy in general is a holding doesn’t make that untrue. A large part of ESG scoring is the direction a company is moving.

Naturally if a fund or etf is greenwashing or declaring untrue statements about how they invest there are issues. Blackrock has a team of lawyers regarding their disclosures in their ESG products but a lot of the issues boils down to 1) not a common framework for disclosures and 2) different esg definition among different stakeholders.

2