CDP
COPT Defense Properties
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I work as the head of esg/sustainability for a publicly traded silicon valley tech firm, and have worked in the corporate sustainability field for 20 years now. As such, I own our responses to the ESG rankers and raters' questionnaires -- Morgan Stanley (MSCI), Institutional Shareholder Services (ISS), Sustainalytics, Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP), S&P Global Corporate Sustainability Assessment (CSA), etc. These are the responses from which investment firms rate companies.
The survey responses are meaningful in the same way that corporate financials are meaningful: a well-scoring company is \*probably\* doing good things, but in the end it \*is\* all (or mostly) self-reported. Not only do I talk with my peers constantly about tips and tricks to improve our scores, but there are also consulting services that you can pay to improve your scores -- \*some even offered by the scoring bodies themselves\*. Yes, you can pay most of them to tell you how to improve your score with them.
That's not necessarily an indictment on the scores. Often, the consultant will actually tell you what \*good actions\* to take (develop climate targets, measure your gender pay equity) to improve your score, so while it can be a conflict of interest, that doesn't mean it's junk. I just wanted to shed light on how the sausage is made, because it's opaque.
But one huge flag I'll raise: the vast majority of the scoring is based on \*disclosure\*, not performance. For example, "yes, we report our carbon footprint and it's one gajillion tons" will get you a higher score than "no, we don't report our carbon footprint." And, too often, "one gajillion tons and doubling each year" will get you the same score as "one gajillion tons and decreasing each year." This is slowly changing with public science-based climate targets (SBTi) but climate is only a piece of ESG.
For this reason, I tend to shy away from investing in ESG-forward funds or ETFs myself. The one that I do have money in is Boston Common ESG Impact (BCAIX) because I trust them; that's certainly not the only good egg, but it's one I've found. Additionally, I have a basket of 50 companies that I've individually researched, across various sectors, that I believe are good for the planet. Happy to share that to anyone who asks but I'm a bit reticent to do so simply because I could be wrong.
Sorry for the long "it's complicated" but hope this sheds some light.

I work as the head of esg/sustainability for a publicly traded silicon valley tech firm, and have worked in the corporate sustainability field for 20 years now. As such, I own our responses to the ESG rankers and raters' questionnaires -- Morgan Stanley (MSCI), Institutional Shareholder Services (ISS), Sustainalytics, Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP), S&P Global Corporate Sustainability Assessment (CSA), etc. These are the responses from which investment firms rate companies.
The survey responses are meaningful in the same way that corporate financials are meaningful: a well-scoring company is \*probably\* doing good things, but in the end it \*is\* all (or mostly) self-reported. Not only do I talk with my peers constantly about tips and tricks to improve our scores, but there are also consulting services that you can pay to improve your scores -- \*some even offered by the scoring bodies themselves\*. Yes, you can pay most of them to tell you how to improve your score with them.
That's not necessarily an indictment on the scores. Often, the consultant will actually tell you what \*good actions\* to take (develop climate targets, measure your gender pay equity) to improve your score, so while it can be a conflict of interest, that doesn't mean it's junk. I just wanted to shed light on how the sausage is made, because it's opaque.
But one huge flag I'll raise: the vast majority of the scoring is based on \*disclosure\*, not performance. For example, "yes, we report our carbon footprint and it's one gajillion tons" will get you a higher score than "no, we don't report our carbon footprint." And, too often, "one gajillion tons and doubling each year" will get you the same score as "one gajillion tons and decreasing each year." This is slowly changing with public science-based climate targets (SBTi) but climate is only a piece of ESG.
For this reason, I tend to shy away from investing in ESG-forward funds or ETFs myself. The one that I do have money in is Boston Common ESG Impact (BCAIX) because I trust them; that's certainly not the only good egg, but it's one I've found. Additionally, I have a basket of 50 companies that I've individually researched, across various sectors, that I believe are good for the planet. Happy to share that to anyone who asks but I'm a bit reticent to do so simply because I could be wrong.
Sorry for the long "it's complicated" but hope this sheds some light.