|51
Figure 11: Main results
This figure displays in blue the mean difference between sustainability funds and conventional funds (as a measure of the capital allocation effect) in percentage of the mean of the conventional funds, and in orange the mean difference between sustainability funds and their respective conventional benchmarks (as a measure of the asset management effect) in percentage of the mean of the benchmarks. Source: Inrate ESG Impact data and Climate Impact data as of October 2020.
4.2. Comparisons 4.2.1. Capital allocation effect: Sustainability funds vs. conventional funds With the comparison between sustainability funds (N=51) and conventional funds (N=25), we investigated whether sustainability funds actually allocated capital towards activities with a better sustainability impact. The raw data shows that the interquartile ranges (IQR, i.e. the range between the first and third quartile) of the two groups were at least partly overlapping for all of the four dependent impact variables (Figure 12). Furthermore, there were several outliers, especially when it came to the involvement in major environmental controversies. The results of the t-tests are summarised in Table 4. With regards to the ESG Impact score, sustainability funds indeed had a significantly higher score by 0.04, i.e. a 9%77 increase (p-value < 0.001). Compared to the conventional funds, the sustainability funds had a significant reduction in the involvement in major environmental controversies by 0.8 percentage points, which corresponds to a 69% reduction (p-value = 0.01). However, we neither found a significant difference for carbon intensity, nor for critical activities.
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This percentage was calculated as follows: 100*(average for conventional funds - average for sustainability funds)/ average for conventional funds; in this case the average concerns the ESG Impact score (see Table 4).
INFRAS | 3 May 2021 | Summary
