Elon Musk called ESG a scam – did Tesla boss do investors a favor?

Defiance was offered by Standard & Poor’s, which rejected Tesla from its benchmark ESG; Discomfort emerged from the Tesla TSLA,
-6.42%
investors, Including well-known asset manager and Tesla bull Cathy Wood. There was also a surprised sound from Elon Musk.

sustainable investment: Two leaders in sustainable investing say widely adopted ESG ratings and zero net pledges are mostly worthless

Mostly, a new wave of confusion has emerged over what constitutes an “ESG” if what many see as the anti-gasoline maverick no longer deserves it.

The S&P 500 ESG has dropped Tesla Musk from the lineup As part of the annual rebalancing. But, in large part because it’s also supposed to track the broader S&P 500 SPX,
+ 0.01%And
Despite the addition of an ESG layer, the benchmark kept oil giant ExxonMobil XOM,
+ 0.79%
In the best combination of ESG. Also listed: JPMorgan Chase & Co. JPM,
-0.82%And
Endorsed by environmental groups as the main lender to the oil sector.

“ESG is a SCAM. It has been armed by phony Social Justice Warriors,” Musk tweeted, He regrets that ExxonMobil topped Tesla.

Wood’s terse response to Tesla’s removal was “ridiculous.”

Margaret Dorn, Senior Director and Head of ESG Indices, North America, S&P Dow Jones Indexes said, In a blog post.

Read: Electric vehicles can store energy for our homes and the power grid: why ‘everything’ technology is an investment topic to pursue

Specifically, the letters “S” and “G” were the cause of Tesla’s “E” tension, an S&P report explains. Tesla was flagged for allegations of racial discrimination and poor working conditions at its factory in Fremont, California . The automaker has also been summoned for its handling of the NHTSA investigation After several deaths and injuries, They were associated with autopilot vehicles.

The investment house that is concerned with the principles of environmental, social and corporate governance Just Capital has a cash similar to that of Standard & Poor’s. The investment firm said Tesla has historically scored in the lowest 10% of Just Capital’s annual sustainability ratings, mainly because of the way it pays and treats its employees. Overall, Tesla does well on environmental issues, handling customers, and creating American jobs, but not so well under certain “S” and “G” criteria, including “paying a fair wage and living” nor “protecting workers’ health and safety” nor with controversies regarding discrimination related to diversity, equity and inclusion.

Paul Watchman, an industry consultant who wrote a seminal report in the mid-2000s that helped jump-start investing in ESG, said Tesla should be part of the ESG indexes. “Not all ESG violations are created equal, and this assessment shows how distorted the S&P assessment is.” tell Bloomberg.

This difference of opinion is what may confuse investors the most.

“The majority of investment managers who implement ESG are paying data providers to tell them what ESG is good for,” said Tony Tursch of Calamos Global Sustainable Equities Fund. In an interview with MarketWatch.

ESG ratings are not similar to the scores given by credit rating agencies, in that there is agreement on standards of creditworthiness. With ESG, there are still no standard definitions.

Dimensions fund advisors say it is also facing a challenge in its ESG rankings. They said the relationship between ESG scores for different providers was estimated to be 0.54. By comparison, the correlation in the credit ratings assigned by Moody’s and S&P is 0.99.

MSCI Inc. is still ESG, the leading provider of ESG ratings, includes Tesla and Exxon in its broadly focused ESG-focused indexes, another layer of confusion about what ESG actually means. The methodologies for MSCI and S&P’s use of their ESG indicators are very similar.

For the S&P segment, Exxon’s inclusion maintains the energy sector representation in line with overall objectives.

But this leaves many investors wondering why ESG is combined with any other priority? Still others lament all the exceptions that can come with an ESG pledge and placing a stock in an ESG index, ETF, or mutual fund.

Strong environmental groups usually deal with the issue of listing conventional oil companies under the ESG label. “We see funds with ESG in their name get an F on our screeners because they own dozens of fossil fuel extraction companies and coal-fired utilities,” said Andrew Behar, CEO of As You Sow.

But other energy industry watchers say their inclusion could have a different meaning. Moving to cleaner options in established, traditional energy companies would be more effective given their size, multinational reach, and investments. In practices such as carbon sequestration. And they argue that their ESG-lite consideration keeps pressure on evolution.

No matter which part of ESG matters to an investor the most, trust is the most important of all.

In fact, some ESG watchers say Tesla isn’t as environmentally clean as its hyper-focus might suggest, which essentially means you can’t deliver on any company’s ESG promise on merit alone. Tesla was recently tagged by As You Sow in 55 company class report On the “green” progress after the pledges. Tesla It scored poorly for not sharing emissions data publicly.

“part of [Tesla’s] The problem is the lack of disclosure. “For someone committed to free speech, Musk could do a better job of transparency at Tesla,” said Martin Whitaker, founding CEO of Just Capital.

Read: What does “freedom of expression” actually mean? Twitter does not censor speech, despite what Elon Musk and many users believe

Besides environmental data, especially greenhouse gas emissions, an increase in broader company sustainability information can present challenges, Will Collins Dean, senior portfolio manager and Eric Jeffroy, senior investment analyst at Dimensional Fund Advisors, say in a comment.

For example, corporate sustainability reports may be up to a hundred pages long, vary widely from company to company, and may not contain all the information that is of interest to investors.

Securities and Exchange Commission Getting closer to standardized reporting on the risks of climate changeand took a look at broader commitments to environmental, social and corporate governance. The Department of Labor is also considering including ESGs in 401(k)s, including how transparent this addition is. At the moment, the work of the company is voluntary.

If individual companies lose the ESG mark. The money that collects these names can be equally confusing.

a Report By InfluenceMap, a London-based non-profit organization, it evaluated 593 equity funds with more than $256 billion in total net assets and found that “421 of them had a negative Portfolio Paris alignment,” a screening tool used by Influence Map. This means that the bulk of the lists are not on track to reach the global warming limit of 2 degrees Celsius (and ideally 1.5 degrees) set in the voluntary Paris climate agreement. Companies may be promising a greener future, but far fewer are delivering.

The key to sound ESG investing is narrowing expectations.

“Instead of using general ESG ratings, investors should first identify the specific ESG considerations that are most important to them, and then choose an investment strategy accordingly,” said Collins Dean and Jeffroy.

“One example of this is reducing exposure to companies with a high emissions intensity,” they said. The wider the set of goals, the more difficult it is to manage the interactions between them. A “kitchen sink” approach that incorporates dozens of variables may make it difficult for investors to understand portfolio allocations and may lead to unintended consequences.”