Free sources of Sustainability and Environment, Social & Governance (ESG) information

With Green Week here, we thought it would be a good idea to share some free sources of information on sustainability and the environment.

Several Government bodies provide guidance on sustainability:

• The United Nations has 17 Goals of sustainable development. Developed in 2015, this global partnership aims to link sustainable goals and show the importance of how everyone can play a part in the world’s sustainability agenda and how it all interconnects.
• The US Securities and Exchange Commission has a Climate and ESG Task Force.
• The European Union has adopted a proposal for a Directive on corporate sustainability due diligence. 
• The UK government has its own set of Climate-related reporting requirements.

Companies and organisations also want to show that they are playing their part. Guidelines and standards have been produced so that companies can report on the steps they are taking to achieve a good ESG score or rating. These include…

courtesy of rawpixel.com

• SASB Standards  SASB aims to help companies disclose relevant sustainability information to their investors. Their standards are available for 77 industries.
• GRI – Standards provides guidance on what reporting standards are available for companies – large or small, public or private can use.
• Task Force on Climate-related Financial disclosures (TCFD) has the specific aim is to improve and increase reporting of climate-related financial information via its framework. 

Companies and organisations collect the non-financial information and report as part of the ESG (environmental, social and governance) data that is often shared as part of a company’s annual report. These are used by other organisations to create ESG scores or ratings. These cover areas such as human resource practices, e.g. number of females on a board, business ethics, environmental sustainability, social factors and corporate governance.  

Many ratings agencies and databases exist that include ESG data. Here are some free sites containing ESG data on companies:

• Corporate register
• MSCI ESG ratings [8,500+ companies] 
• Sustainalytics [16,000+ companies including emerging markets] 
• S&P Global ESG Scores [11,000+ companies, 30 focus areas] 
• ISS ESG Gateway [7,300+ public & private companies, aligned to European Union regulation] 
• CDP Search [330+ companies, data gathered from questionnaires sent to companies] 

All of these sources gather different data and use a variety of corporate information sources to create their rating or score.  These scores or ratings can be used to assess a company’s sustainability and ethical performance so that one company can be compared with another.

For more comprehensive coverage of ESG data, Cranfield also provides access to Bloomberg and Eikon.

Feature image from Pixabay. Available at: https://pixabay.com/photos/money-profit-finance-business-2696219/