Can sustainable investments achieve performance objectives? 

Addressing key material factors that have often not been considered investment decisions can help investors maximize a portfolio’s risk and return profile. In addition to addressing constituent concerns, incorporating material environmental, social, and governance factors into an investment decision value chain can enhance long-term returns, decrease risk by providing downside protection, and deliver portfolio benefits such as diversification and reduced volatility. 

Reports and Resource

• Impact as a source of alpha? The elephant in the room | Research from Schroders and Oxford University’s Said Business School provides evidence that impact can be a source of alpha - April 2025
• Do ESG Efforts Create Value? | Research by Bain & Company and EcoVadis indicates that there is a connection between sustainability and business results in the areas of sustainable supply chain, renewable energy, employee satisfaction, and DEI. Companies and private equity funds can realize financial returns while accelerating their ESG transition - 2023
• Does Sustainability Generate Better Financial Performance? Review, Meta-Analysis, and Propositions | This research surveyed 1,141 primary peer-reviewed papers and 27 meta-reviews published between 2015 and 2020 on to examine ESG financial performance. The collective sample suggest that the financial performance of ESG investing has on average been indistinguishable from conventional investing - 2023
• The Financial Impact of Fossil Fuel Divestment | Auke Plantinga & Bert Scholtens research finds that the investment performance of portfolios that exclude fossil fuel production companies does not significantly differ in terms of risk and return from unrestricted portfolios - August  2020 
• ESG and Financial Performance: Uncovering the Relationship by Aggregating Evidence from 1,000 Plus Studies Published between 2015 – 2020 | NYU Stern Center for Sustainable Business, partnered with Rockefeller Asset Management to provide a Meta-studies examining the relationship between environmental, social, and governance (ESG) and financial performance have a decades-long history
• Investing in Our Mission: A Five-Year Case Study of Fossil Fuel Divestment at the Rockefeller Brothers Fund | A Case Study of Fossil Fuel Divestment at the Rockefeller Brothers Fund - May 2020
• Financial Performance of Sustainable Investing: The State of the Field and Case Studies for Endowments | Intentional Endowments Network, February 2020 - provides a collection of real-world cases of college and university endowments implementing sustainable investment strategies and meeting their financial performance targets.
• Where ESG Fails, Institutional Investor, A case study that shows responsible investing delivers alpha - October 2019
• The Business Case for ESG | Intentional Endowments Network - defines what ESG investing is, describes how ESG investing and analysis can be approached, and addresses how ESG investing strategies perform financially - March 2016
• Seeing SRI in Context, Steffon M. Gray, assistant director, research and policy analysis, NACUBO, March 2019. Compares the performance of 2017 NACUBO-Commonfund survey participants who integrate responsible investing practices with those who don't and finds no significant difference except among the largest endowment where those with responsible investing practices outperformed those without.
• Paper on financial performance of ESG integration in US investing | Principles for Responsible Investment —Summarizes the findings on ESG materiality in three empirical studies - February 2018
• Sustainable Investing and Bond Returns, Barclays, October 2016 — Examines the relationship between ESG investing and performance in the US corporate bond markets and finds that the incorporation of ESG factors into the analysis of bonds had a small but consistent performance benefit.
• Corporate Sustainability: First Evidence on Materiality (pdf), Mozaffar Khan, George Serafeim, Aaron Yoon, March 9, 2015 — Found that firms with good ratings on material sustainability issues significantly outperform firms the poor ratings on these issues. 
• The Impact of Corporate Sustainability on Organizational Processes and Performance (pdf) | Robert G. Eccles, Ioannis Ioannou, George Serafeim, Harvard Business School, July 2013 — 18-year study (1993-2011) showing that 90 companies with strong sustainability policies outperformed a similar group of 90 companies with low sustainability standards, with a 4.8 percent higher annual above-market average return.
• Allocating Capital for Long-Term Returns, Generation Foundation, May 2015 - Makes the investment case for sustainable capitalism
• Excerpt from GMO The Race for Our Lives — An analysis of the performance impact of divesting from various S&P 500 sectors. 
• Financial performance implications of divesting from U.S. fossil fuel stocks — IEN online resource, January 2015 - compares the performance of the Russell 3000 Index to an optimized portfolio of Russell 3000 Index stocks without consumable fuel stocks over rolling 3 year periods spanning 25 years from 1988-2013.
• Video: How a Sustainable Investing Lens leads to Better Stock Selection —  Keynote Address by David Blood, Co-Founder & Senior Partner, Generation Investment Management at the 2016 Intentionally Designed Endowment Forum 
• The investment case for impact in private equity — Nadina Stodiek, Catherine Macaulay, and Paul Lamacraft. A case on why impact investing doesn't have to be giving up performance.
• How the early impact private equity firms are preforming —  by Toby Mitchenall. Showcasing early impact products launced by large asset managers and why they are preforming in line with their other priavte equity products.
• The Alpha in Impact, A tideline publication with impact capital managers —  Using ten drivers of impact alpha, drivers around three core components of sound investment management. These are, accessing opportunities, creating value, strengthening outcomes.

David Blood discussing sustainability and stock selection at 2016 IEN Forum