Big tech and ESG: Index giants falling short on standards

Facebook and Amazon among worst offenders, report claims

Investors are not generally aware of the poor ESG credentials of the world's largest internet companies, which despite their heavy weighting within global ESG indices are responsible for a sizeable environmental impact, and pose risk to investors by virtue of their social and governance standards, research suggests.

A report from investment house Alquity, entitled Are We Ignoring the Environmental and Social Impact of the Internet?, was published earlier this month and reveals that modern computing is responsible for about 3% of global CO2 emissions - equivalent to the entire aviation industry - while energy usage from the data servers they rely on could grow to 11% of total global energy consumption by 2030. China's data centre industry alone consumed 161 terawatt-hours of electricity in 2018, equal to the electricity consumption of the whole of Thailand that year, according to the report, while a ...