Investors are withdrawing money from sustainable funds as the ESG enthusiasm of the past few years is waning amid high interest rates, poor returns, plunging renewable energy stocks, tightened SEC rules, and political backlash. Over the past year, investors have withdrawn a total of $14.2 billion from U.S. sustainable funds in four consecutive quarters of net withdrawals, data from Morningstar showed.
Green Energy Stocks Battered Globally, renewable energy funds saw record outflows of money in the third quarter of 2023 as stocks of wind and solar developers and suppliers crashed amid rising costs, higher interest rates, and supply-chain challenges. Renewable energy exchange traded funds ETFs, tracking the performance of clean energy companies, suffered a total of $1.4 billion of outflows in the third quarter, the highest outflows of any previous quarter, according to data from LSEG Lipper cited by Reuters. The record outflows between July and September only partially offset net inflows of $3.36 billion for the first half of 2023, the data showe