The Securities and Exchange Commission recently announced a rule requiring environmental, social, and governance funds to be 80% aligned with the funds stated goals. This could reveal a long-held secret of ESG funds: to be competitive, they are packed with more profitable investments that are not green.

...The growth of ESG has sparked regulation for sustainable reporting standards for businesses. The European Union was the first, with the European Sustainability Reporting Standards that were approved in July and set to go into effect January 1. The ESRS will require publicly traded and large privately held companies to report greenhouse gas emissions, actions taken by the entity to reduce GHG emissions, and other green policies. Eventually it will expand to small and medium-sized enterprises. While reporting will be mandatory, no environmentally friendly action is required. The SEC is set to release similar standards for the US in October.

The increased interest in ESG caused fund managers and businesses to adjust their practices. This sudden shift raised concerns of greenwashing, or the exaggeration of environmentally friendly initiatives to appear greener than they actually are. A new term, climate washing, has recently developed that is specific to the exaggeration of climate change initiatives.

Deutsche Bank-controlled (DBKGn.DE) investment firm DWS will pay $25 million to settle charges over misstatements regarding its environmental, social, and governance (ESG) investing and failures in policies designed to prevent money laundering, U.S. regulators said on Monday.

DWS Investment Management Americas made "concerning" misstatements regarding its ESG investment process, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) said in a statement.

The firm marketed itself as a leader in ESG investing, but from August 2018 until late 2021, failed to implement certain related policies as they were billed to investors, the regulator said.

Three-quarters of companies globally are not ready to have their environmental, social and governance (ESG) data audited externally months before new regulations kick in, according to a new report from KPMG published on Tuesday.

Stricter European Union, U.S. and global rules are being introduced, mostly in time for the 2024 reporting season, to replace a patchwork of voluntary private sector practices for listed companies to make climate-related disclosures.

Regulators say external auditing of sustainability-related data — while not as extensive as financial auditing — is crucial for giving investors information free of misleading environmental claims, known as greenwashing.

Speaking at a New York Times event, he observed that heavy-handed policies won’t work: "If you try to do climate brute force, you will get people who say, ’I like climate but I don’t want to bear that cost and reduce my standard of living.’"

As Gates noted, many of these people are in middle-income countries, like China and India, that are the biggest contributors to carbon emissions today and whose emissions (unlike those of the United States) have been growing.

He also rained on the greens’ apocalyptic parade, saying "no temperate country is going to become uninhabitable."

And he cautioned against untested approaches like massive tree planting: "Are we the science people or are we the idiots? Which one do we want to be?"