--- title: ESG & Sustainable Business description: ESG integrates environmental, social and governance factors into business. You will learn reporting frameworks, sustainable finance, corporate climate strategy and the critiques of ESG. category: business-entrepreneurship subcategory: business-fundamentals difficulty: beginner, intermediate, advanced url: /subject/esg-and-sustainable-business --- # ESG & Sustainable Business ESG integrates environmental, social and governance factors into business. You will learn reporting frameworks, sustainable finance, corporate climate strategy and the critiques of ESG. ## Available Resources 1 Books • 2 Courses • 3 Websites • 2 Papers ## Books ### 1. Grow the Pie: How Great Companies Deliver Both Purpose and Profit (Updated Edition) **Author:** Alex Edmans A book-length, evidence-led argument that responsible business creates value for shareholders and society together, rather than splitting a fixed pie between them. It covers stewardship, executive pay, buybacks and stakeholder metrics, with attention to the quality of the evidence. **Difficulty:** Intermediate | **Language:** English | **Price:** Paid **Link:** https://www.amazon.com/dp/1009054678?tag=edmonddante07-20 **Tags:** stakeholder-capitalism, corporate-purpose, responsible-business, executive-pay, stewardship ## Papers ### 1. The End of ESG **Author:** Alex Edmans A short, open-access Financial Management essay (2023). Edmans argues ESG is both important and nothing special: long-term material factors belong in ordinary investing and management. He critiques ESG labels, ratings and exclusion as a separate category, but not ESG itself. It gives a balanced counterweight to Damodaran: a sympathetic insider arguing that ESG should be absorbed into ordinary investing. **Difficulty:** Intermediate | **Language:** English | **Price:** Free **Link:** https://lbsresearch.london.edu/id/eprint/2749/ **Tags:** esg, sustainable-investing, esg-ratings, long-term-investing ### 2. Aggregate Confusion: The Divergence of ESG Ratings **Author:** Florian Berg, Julian F. Kölbel, Roberto Rigobon An open-access Review of Finance study comparing ratings from six major ESG raters, including MSCI, Sustainalytics and Refinitiv. It shows how little they agree and splits the disagreement into measurement (56%), scope (38%) and weight (6%). **Difficulty:** Advanced | **Language:** English | **Price:** Free **Link:** https://academic.oup.com/rof/article/26/6/1315/6590670 **Tags:** esg-ratings, rating-divergence, sustainable-finance, empirical-finance ## Websites ### 1. Sounding good or Doing good? A Skeptical Look at ESG **Author:** Aswath Damodaran A valuation professor's sceptical case against ESG as it is sold. He separates three questions: does ESG change firm value, do markets price it, and does society gain? He weighs the evidence on each and links a companion video and a paper with Bradford Cornell. **Difficulty:** Intermediate | **Language:** English | **Price:** Free **Link:** https://aswathdamodaran.blogspot.com/2020/09/sounding-good-or-doing-good-skeptical.html **Tags:** esg, esg-critique, valuation, sustainable-investing ### 2. IFRS S2 Climate-related Disclosures (ISSB Standards Navigator) **Author:** International Sustainability Standards Board (ISSB) The ISSB's official page for IFRS S2, the global baseline for climate-related financial disclosure, alongside its companion IFRS S1 on general requirements. It covers governance, strategy, risk management, metrics and targets, the effective date, amendment history and access to the full standard text. **Difficulty:** Advanced | **Language:** English | **Price:** Free **Link:** https://www.ifrs.org/issued-standards/ifrs-sustainability-standards-navigator/ifrs-s2-climate-related-disclosures/ **Tags:** ifrs-s2, issb, climate-disclosure, sustainability-reporting, tcfd ### 3. GHG Protocol Corporate Accounting and Reporting Standard (Revised Edition) **Author:** World Resources Institute; World Business Council for Sustainable Development The standard that defines how companies build a greenhouse gas inventory. It covers organizational and operational boundaries, Scope 1, 2 and 3 emissions, base-year recalculation and reporting requirements. It is free to download, and ISSB, CSRD and SBTi all build on it. Carbon accounting sits under almost every climate-related ESG disclosure, and this is where the rules come from. **Difficulty:** Intermediate | **Language:** English | **Price:** Free **Link:** https://ghgprotocol.org/corporate-standard **Tags:** ghg-protocol, carbon-accounting, scope-3-emissions, emissions-inventory, climate-disclosure ## Courses ### 1. Sustainability Consulting **Author:** Jonathan Tomkin University of Illinois course covering the tools sustainability consultants use, including life cycle analysis, footprinting, ESG reporting and LEED standards. You will finish able to read an LCA report critically and apply life-cycle thinking to a supply chain. **Difficulty:** Beginner | **Language:** English | **Price:** Free **Link:** https://www.coursera.org/learn/sustainability-consulting **Tags:** sustainability-consulting, life-cycle-assessment, carbon-footprinting, esg-reporting, leed ### 2. Renewable Energy and Green Building Entrepreneurship **Author:** Chris Wedding Duke University course on starting ventures in renewable energy and green building, using case studies such as Strata Solar and Cherokee Investment Partners. Learners identify market opportunities, analyse successful firms, apply the Business Model Canvas and prepare to approach investors. **Difficulty:** Beginner | **Language:** English | **Price:** Free **Link:** https://www.coursera.org/learn/renewable-energy-entrepreneurship **Tags:** cleantech-entrepreneurship, business-model-canvas, green-building, renewable-energy-business, startup-financing --- *This content is part of Dantes.io - Your Treasure Map to Knowledge* *Curated by humans at Dantes.io. Personal study use welcome; republishing this curation requires permission (team@dantes.io).* View this page online: https://dantes.io/subject/esg-and-sustainable-business