「ESG·益起读VOL 21」Thinking about socially responsible investing? Here’s what to know [part II]
朗读者：曹疏影
汽车行业数字化
导读
ESG投资对公司评估其营运风险及财务的重要性是不可否认的。ESG是可以帮助你的个人价值观与投资保持一致的一种方法，然而风险评估在不同的行业可能意味着不同的事情，努力确保你的投资反映了这些信念不是一件轻松的事。本文讲述了如何寻找并正确识别ESG投资与基金。
How to find ESG and sustainable investments
Every investment requires due diligence, but that’s even more important for ESG and sustainable investing.
No company perfectly excels at all three pillars, so it’s important to know what matters to you—whether it’s the E, S, or G. For example, a car company may receive strong marks for its electric-vehicle production, but have a poor score on workplace diversity and safety issues. ESG scores are useful when reviewed over time to see how a company’s score rises or falls. This can help you gauge how seriously it takes certain risks, and how it’s trending.
ESG measures a company’s risk in operations and financial well-being, so a high ESG score in a non-material risk is less important than receiving strong marks on criteria necessary for business. A good place to start your research is the Sustainability Accounting Standards Board (SASB) Materiality Finder, which allows you to look at disclosure topics and their associated accounting metrics for 11 different industries.
Material risk can mean different things in different industries. For a financial company, for example, low carbon emissions might be less material to its operations. Cybersecurity defenses, on the other hand, would be highly material to its operations.
Be diligent, too, about so-called “greenwashing.” When a company spends more on marketing to promote its green initiatives than on actual reforestation or species preservation, that’s greenwashing.
How to research an ESG fund’s holdings
Don’t just pick an ESG, socially responsible, or sustainable investment fund by its name. Dig into the prospectus and fact sheet to see which sustainable companies it holds—or doesn’t. This is easier with ETFs, since most report their holdings daily. Researching the fund may tell you:
If it’s a clean-energy fund, does it hold renewable energy producers, or are fossil-fuel companies lurking inside?
How does it define its mandate? Does a water fund hold mostly water industry stocks, or does it include companies with indirect ties to water usage?
Does it exclude entire stock market sectors, like energy or industrials?
Alternatively, does it try to replicate the components of the broader stock market? If so, it may include, for example, fossil-fuel energy companies that rank high on social or governance factors, but low on environmental metrics.
The bottom line
ESG and sustainable investing is a way to align your personal values with your investments, but it requires work to ensure your investments actually reflect those beliefs. And remember, these are investments first and foremost. Review a fund’s performance and fees, and make sure the risks match up with your time horizon, objectives, and risk tolerance.
来源：
Carlson, D. (2023). Thinking about socially responsible investing? Here’s what to know. Encyclopædia Britannica. Available at: https://www.britannica.com/money/socially-responsible-investing
