Not sure I understand.
What are costs the company incurs but does not pay, thus artificially raising their profits?
By ‘messes the company left the public to pay’, do you mean such costs as disposing of spent lithium ion batteries as hazardous waste? Or how to dispose of salt water from evaporating ponds after the lithium has been removed? Or perhaps the cost of disposing of no longer functioning windmill blades or even the environmental cost of the estimated 328,000 birds, including endangered species such as the golden Eagle, that are killed each year by turbine blades. Yes, it sounds like profits are being artificially enhanced.
And I doubt these ‘green’ energy companies are required to fund the equivalent of an Oil Spill Liability Trust Fund as oil companies now are required to do to cover these and other costs.
Tobacco companies.
Drugs (all kinds–legal and not).
Oil companies.
Medical malpractice/insurance companies.
Any business that benefits from “limited” liability (for anything).
Nuclear power plants.
3M and other companies making PFOAs.
All transportation systems (cars to whatever).
Any source of air/water/ground pollution.
They are called in econ negative externalities and they are much larger than the profits.
Meaning if gasoline is $3 at the pump the full cost might be $12 if we include the clean up.
The law may well include the clean up one day. It has for other companies.
Buy a building that had a laundry mat in it 40 years ago. I have heard the site is considered toxic. Don’t actually fully know why. I do not know the chemicals that were involved. No you are liable for a toxic waste site.
This recent article is about investor beliefs and feelings. The article in the OP was about investing results.
To begin with, ESG funds certainly perform poorly in financial terms. In a recent Journal of Finance paper, University of Chicago researchers analyzed the Morningstar sustainability ratings of more than 20,000 mutual funds representing over $8 trillion of investor savings. Although the highest rated funds in terms of sustainability certainly attracted more capital than the lowest rated funds, none of the high sustainability funds outperformed any of the lowest rated funds.
Researchers at Columbia University and London School of Economics compared the ESG record of U.S. companies in 147 ESG fund portfolios and that of U.S. companies in 2,428 non-ESG portfolios. They found that the companies in the ESG portfolios had worse compliance record for both labor and environmental rules. They also found that companies added to ESG portfolios did not subsequently improve compliance with labor or environmental regulations.
The bottleneck is our electric grid. The article discusses the managers want investments in esg. The energy transfer is through a grid that needs a lot of work, ie hundreds of solar and wind projects already built are not hooked up to the grid.
So, the takeaway is management saying it follows “ESG” principles is like Radio Shack management talking about it’s “open door policy”, that is, nothing but PR? The truth is probably the exact opposite, like how anyone who said anything RS management didn’t want to hear was putting his job in jeopardy? So, the real ESG guys at the ones who do not have flox of suits against them for violating wage and hour laws, or lying/cheating management, or turning the areas they operate in, into garbage dumps?
Lawmakers in the European Parliament agreed today to dramatic cuts to the EU’s sustainability reporting and due diligence laws, including significant reductions in the number of companies to be covered by the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD) and Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive (CSDDD), and the elimination of the obligation for companies to prepare climate transition plans.
