How your retirement investments can help protect the environment (2024)

As a climate-conscious consumer, you might already be cutting down on your water use, buying from eco-friendly companies for your everyday needs, and making the switch away from single-use plastic. But have you thought about how your money is impacting the environment when it's not in use?

Take your retirement account. If you're lucky enough to have retirement investment options, you most likely consider it a "set it and forget it" kind of decision. But there's good reason to go back and check exactly what that 401(k) or equivalent is actually invested in, and make sure that money isn't going to companies that are contributing to environmental harm. In fact, you can make sure the money is actively helping curb climate change.

Reevaluating your account isn't just good for the environment, either.

Andrew Behar, CEO of the nonprofit watchdog and shareholder advocacy group As You Sow, says his organization's mission is to help people "invest with intention." It's actually in your benefit to use such a strategy, he explains. The energy sector continues to be one of the worst performing sectors over the last decade. Meanwhile, the new presidential administration, with its robust climate change commitments, is expected to positively impact the returns on these kind of investments even further.

Here's what you need to know in order to turn your retirement plan into a force for environmental good.

1. Find out exactly where your money can go

Brace yourself: Here comes the rundown on retirement accounts.

For the sake of simplicity, you’re most likely investing portions of your earnings into one of three categories: 1. Employer-sponsored retirement accounts, like 401(k), 403(b), or other defined plans. 2. An individual savings account like an IRA or Roth IRA. Or 3. An account type specific to those who are self-employed, such as a solo 401(k). For more detailed explanations, NerdWallet recently published a breakdown of various retirement account options.

For employer-sponsored accounts, as Behar explains, investment options usually take one of two forms: mutual funds (a collection of stocks, bonds, or other holdings paid into by multiple investors), or equity shares (stock ownership). 401(k) options built out of mutual funds are the most common, and this is likely what your employer offers. Your employer sets the limits and details of your retirement plan, including the types of funds you can invest in within the plan.

If you're not offered an employee-sponsored plan (or maybe even if you are), you’re most likely actively investing in some kind of individual retirement account (IRA) through a private financial institution, like a bank. As an individual, you have much more control and flexibility in what kinds of funds or accounts you’re investing in.

Fortunately, you can track the environmental impact of all of these retirement options.

2. Learn about your fund options

An employer-sponsored fund, like a 401(k), isn’t just money set aside. After defining a contribution, you're encouraged to choose investments for the account as offered by your employer or the financial institution that manages it —places like Vanguard or Fidelity. You should be given a range of stocks and bond funds to choose from.

Tensie Whelan, director of the Stern Center for Sustainable Business at New York University, recommends the first thing you do is connect with your employer's 401(k) advisor to ask about the details of your company retirement options.

Whelan says to ask specifically about whether they offer options like ESG consideration funds or ESG focus funds. ESG is an acronym that refers to environmental, social, and governance criteria that influence the investment portfolios of participating companies. Environmental standards include things like the company's conservation efforts, air emissions, waste management, or land use; social criteria consider broader labor standards, equal employment, the company's relationship with local communities, or employee benefits; and governance includes parameters like board diversity, tax transparency, or other ethical business practices.

Consideration or integration funds use ESG standards as a single factor of their overall portfolio, while focus funds make ESG standards (like fossil-free investments) a central part of the holdings chosen for the fund. Whelan explains that many fund managers have begun adding ESG considerations to retirement offerings, but you may want to have a stronger environmental priority through something like an ESG focus fund.

The term “ESG” may show up explicitly in a fund’s description, but not always. "Sustainable investing" can take many forms — you may hear about impact funds, sustainability sector funds, or other financial options that prioritize environmental impact along with financial performance. Choosing ESG funds as part of your 401(k) investment plan is probably the most straightforward way to have a more environmentally friendly portfolio, because environmental concerns are intentionally built into the fund.

The idea of socially responsible investing has been around for a while, but the presence of ESG funds in retirement offerings is fairly new, according to Whelan. If you haven't noticed these options yet, Whelan says, that doesn't mean they don't exist. And if you've already chosen a retirement plan, you can still choose to invest in funds like these, that prioritize (or even focus exclusively on) things like curbing climate change or divesting from fossil fuels. Your plan’s administrator should have clear guidelines on when you can change your 401(k) investment choices. Ask for guidance from an administrator or equivalent at your place of employment.

Whelan reassures that "if your investing is primarily through a pension fund, all of them have at least a handful of different ESG funds."

If your company doesn't offer any ESG funds, both Behar and Whelan say it's in your benefit to ask for them to be added.

Same goes if you're offered shares in your employer and no carbon- or fossil-free options exist. As You Sow works with company "champions" (employees asking for green investment options) to provide businesses with information that promotes the inclusion of ESG fund offerings. Check out or join their advocacy work on the group's website.

In the meantime, consider investing in ESG funds or impact funds through an IRA or other individual investing option. In many ways, individual retirement accounts are the easier route for environmentally friendly investing, as you have almost full control over what kind of funds or companies you invest in.

Thanks to the accessibility of the internet, you can do most of these things online through your financial institution or fund manager.

After diverting your retirement into an environmentally friendly fund, or choosing to invest through an individual retirement plan, you still have to do the work of double-checking the environmental ratings of your investment choices, Whelan says. More on that later.

3. Define your priorities, and figure out how to stick to them

"You, as an investor, need to decide on your objectives," Whelan says. One way to make your retirement investments more intentional, she says, is to set guiding "screens." In the case for more environmentally friendly investing, "positive screens" are parameters you want to see a fund contributing towards — this could mean company contributions to the United Nations sustainable development goals, clean energy, or reduced waste. Negative screens are the stuff you want to steer clear of: companies that fund extractive fossil fuels, have holdings in coal, etc. For example, I might want to positively invest in companies that have pledged to invest in clean water initiatives, and I want to avoid companies that manufacture goods that contribute to deforestation.

Use these parameters to inform conversations with your employer's retirement manager or 401(k) advisor, and as a guide to create a personal investment plan, find (or build) investment portfolios that are specifically fossil-free or environmentally friendly, and decide whether or not a fund is worthy of your money.

4. Start doing your research

Now that you've established what your employer offers and what you're looking for in an investment option, you have to start the hard work of evaluating the mutual funds and company shares offered. Financial institutions like Morningstar, Bloomberg, and Forbes have compiled lists of top-performing sustainable funds focused on ESG standards, including fossil-free funds. They're a good place to start if you're not able to work with your employer's pension manager, Whelan recommends.

When diving deep into a mutual fund option, "look at three or four of the companies" listed, Whelan says. "Go on those company's websites and see how they look to you in terms of their sustainability credentials." Look first for a sustainability report or section specifically dedicated to the company's commitments to limiting its environmental impact. No report? Red flag! The company should include clear metrics to evaluate their progress and frequently update environmental reporting.

Look to see if they have investments in coal mining and carbon reserves, as well as oil producers, refiners, and even equipment companies that contribute to the extraction of fossil fuels. These are obvious red flags and you’ll want to steer clear of funds that include these kind of companies. You'll need to pay attention to a company's investments on both the production (energy) sector and consumer (utility) sector. Just because a fund doesn't have any holdings in oil production doesn't mean it's not facilitating the use of fossil fuels for energy after it's been extracted.

This can get confusing, even overwhelming, so you might want to get some help from a third-party resource like an advocacy group or financial advisor that specializes in environmentally friendly investing. "Most financial institutions now have a division that they're building around ESG," Whelan says. "Find someone within the company who has this experience. And if you can't find one, then look again online. There's a lot of sustainably-oriented investment managers."

If you want to be really sure about your fund's commitment to environmental protection, or just want an easier way to evaluate multiple fund options at once, use the resources of one of the many advocacy groups evaluating companies for their environmental impact. Whelan recommends organizations like CERES, a sustainability nonprofit that lobbies shareholders to include sustainability metrics in their investing, or As You Sow.

As You Sow offers reports on various ESG considerations and even hosts an online tool, Invest Your Values, that allows investors to search funds and receive detailed reports on the funds' ESG standards.

You can check out their databases of top-scoring fossil-free or deforestation-free funds, or search the databases for a report on funds specifically offered by your employer. Invest Your Values also provides scorecards for equity shares, if you're unable to invest in ESG fund options.

Behar says that some funds that seem to be sustainability-oriented are often low-scoring in their database, which aggregates both third-party reports from advocacy and research groups, as well as their own in-house research. For example, the Fossil-Fuel Reserve Free ETF offered by SPDR State Street Global Advisors (sounds straightforward, right?) actually has 27 companies that are involved in the use of fossil fuel and/or coal combustion, which As You Sow defines as being just as detrimental as extractive processes. While its overall fossil-fuel-free score is a "B," the fund's contributions might not fit your fossil-fuel-free screens. And, generally, a fund might be considered "green" on the whole, but have participating companies that don't meet the standards. It's easy to be fooled on the surface.

This is why both Behar and Whelan recommend diving deeper than a fund's title or basic description, and checking out the reputations of all the fund's holdings. "Transparency is the root to have comparability," Behar says. "Then you can make decisions."

5. Keep checking back as frequently as possible

Whelan urges investors to reevaluate their portfolios and investments every year. Follow up with the funds and companies you're investing in after they publish new annual reports, and keep your investments diverse. If you're waiting for your employer to add more fund options, make sure you maintain consistent communication with the fund administrator.

Because this kind of fund option “is a changing and growing area," Whelan says you want to have diversity in the kinds of investments you make, as well as with the screens you use to inform your investing. "You don't want to have all of your assets in one fund, even if it seems like it's a great ESG fund and a good financial performer... Create more diversity so that if one fund doesn't perform well, you have coverage on the other," Whelan explains.

The Invest Your Values tool lets you search for environmentally focused diversified funds, and to compare companies included in various fund families. As You Sow also has its own fossil-free investing toolkit available online for individual and employee-based investing.

And don't be discouraged by the thought that you might not make as much money as you would with non-ESG funds, says Whelan. It's not true. "Studies they did this past year showed that during COVID, around 50 percent of the ESG funds outperformed the conventional funds," Whelan explains. "It's no longer the case that you have to give up financial performance in order to get good environmental and social performance."