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ESG should be boiled down to one simple measure: emissions

economist.com

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Re: ESG should be boiled down to one simple measure: emissions

#51

Post by lastofthemojito »

gnarbarian wrote: post #9

ESG is a political compliance score. Fall out of favor with certain groups and your score will plummet, publicly tout an agenda around diversity and sustainability and your score will rise. The fact that Exxon (edit: oops I mean shell) has a higher ESG score than Tesla should be all you need to know.

Isn't that like complaining that Whole Foods sells cookies? Whole Foods positions itself as a healthier grocery store, but they still sell chocolate milk and ice cream and cakes and all sorts of products in indulgent categories. They just don't sell ones with high fructose corn syrup or saccharin or other ingredients they've deemed bad.

As I understand it ESG rankings are generally done relative to other companies in a market segment. They aren't saying "this airline has a high ESG score, they must be less environmentally damaging than this farming company with a lower ESG score". They're ranking which airlines do the "good" things (for some value of good).

Re: ESG should be boiled down to one simple measure: emissions

#52

Post by Bubble_Pop_22 »

losteric wrote: post #45
Bubble_Pop_22 wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The fact that Exxon (edit: oops I mean shell) has a higher ESG score than Tesla should be all you need to know. If you weren't so deeply into Musk intimate parts and repeat word for word his tweet you'd realize that it makes perfect sense. Exxon only extracts the thing, it doesn't burn it. Tesla burns a lot of energy to build cars. That's not to say ESG is a perfect system, perfection would be assigning an ESG scor…

> Exxon only extracts the thing, it doesn't burn it. Tesla burns a lot of energy to build cars. ESG supposed to provide a holistic measure of impact. Exxon and Tesla's ESG score would include the impact of using their product (ie burning Exxon's gas, driving and eventually disposing Tesla's cars)

Doesn't change the core concept of my post. The enemy of the environment is not Exxon or Tesla or Shell.

The enemy of the environment are the CEO of Exxon, Shell and Tesla. Just one individual like that emits more CO2 than a small town during their whole lifetime of traveling in private jets and yachts to their big mansions all over the globe

Re: ESG should be boiled down to one simple measure: emissions

#55

Post by jjoonathan »

washbrain wrote: post #34
gnarbarian wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They can be recycled once we have a large install base

Can they? I've seen people make this claim, but I've not seen it actually substantiated. Who has successfully recycled one, what was their yield, what was the cost?

The techniques that separate lithium from ore are extreme overkill for separating lithium from dead batteries. Recycling lithium is like mining lithium on easy mode: better yield and cost. If an EV can justify the raw resource extraction within one car lifetime -- and it can, handily -- it justifies the recycling. We should expect recycling to be (average EV lifetime) behind on the scale curve, though, which will make it a prime source for anti-EV talking points until the market saturates in a decade or two.

> washbrain

Ha, nice try.

Re: ESG should be boiled down to one simple measure: emissions

#56

Post by mullingitover »

ESG exists because there's a market for that form of equity. That market is willing to buy equity that might even underperform the rest of the market, because it explicitly does perform in the metric these buyers care about.

There are already options if you strictly are focused on emissions, so I don't think this article is meaningful. The Economist is right-leaning and would certainly love to distract ESG equity buyers from their pesky concerns about social and corporate governance. My guess is that the target readership for The Economist is executives, and they would certainly love to make ESG scrutiny of their ballooning compensation go away.

Re: ESG should be boiled down to one simple measure: emissions

#57

Post by SpicyLemonZest »

gnarbarian wrote: post #28
andrepd wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well why shouldn't they be? Most major auto makers are phasing out development of new ICE drivetrains, and phasing out ICE manufacturing altogether. Meanwhile Tesla is certainly not without criticism.

>plans to phase out vs >never offered and never will offer isn't that criticism political in nature?

YMMV on exactly what counts as "political", but I can easily imagine someone having an honest, good faith belief that investing in Toyota's transition to EVs is just as good for the planet as investing in Tesla's from-scratch EVs.

Re: ESG should be boiled down to one simple measure: emissions

#58

Post by smsm42 »

california2077 wrote: post #24
sjaak wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Shell: AA https://www.msci.com/our-solutions/esg-investing/esg-ratings... Higher than TSLA

[flagged]

So you're saying this score is actually how left-wing is the management of the company? I understand why a left-wing politician would eagerly embrace such score, but I do not see how a person not in the clutches of partisan fervor would want anything to do with it. In fact, a rational investor would keep away from such companies, as they would see the management sacrifice the benefit of their company and their client for political purposes - as we have already seen numerous examples. You don't really want to invest in a company where the management is willing to hurt the business to make a partisan point.

Re: ESG should be boiled down to one simple measure: emissions

#59

Post by nemo44x »

gnarbarian wrote: post #46
cardanome wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A electric cars are mostly a luxury item for rich people to feel better. Not sure why you think Tesla should have a good rating. They are harmful in that they are actively distracting from the proper solution: that people shouldn't have private cars. The environmental cost to produce car, the space they take up in the cities, in the end private car ownership can not be made sustainable even if they run on electric. T…

I don't live in a city. I'm 20 miles from the nearest grocery store. I build real physical things with my hands that require physical materials like lumber to haul around. I can't haul 2000 lb of lumber on the back of my road bike.

No post body was provided.

Re: ESG should be boiled down to one simple measure: emissions

#60

Post by Robin_Message »

baobob wrote: post #29
gnarbarian wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

also Tesla is only average for the automotive industry which is mind-boggling.

> To manufacture each EV battery, you must process > 25,000 pounds of brine for the lithium > 30,000 pounds of ore for the cobalt > 5,000 pounds of ore for the nickel, 25,000 pounds of ore for copper > Digging up 500,000 pounds of the earth's crust > For just - one - battery. https://twitter.com/brianroemmele/status/1503176565974216710 Would appreciate a fact check if this is anyone's business here

My rough and ready sums put 30,000 pounds of petrol through the lifetime of an average ICE car.

Meanwhile, I see numbers like this a lot and they always seem to trend high. You're talking 250 tons of ores to make perhaps 250-1000kg of the car; an efficiency of between 0.1 and 0.4 percent over some pretty straightforward, widely available ores. That doesn't really stack up with the numbers you get if you look at the efficiency of commercial ores for those minerals.

So I think the mining is comparable between battery and petrol, but as others point out, you can recycle the battery; the petrol had become problematic carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.

If nothing else, you could grind up the batteries and treat them as ore for any single one of the minerals used, and by your numbers you'd be way better off.

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