Tesla Inc (NASDAQ:TSLA) boss Elon Musk lashed out in a series of tweets after the electric vehicle company was booted out of the S&P 500 environmental, social and governance (ESG) index.
The operator of the index, S&P Dow Jones Indices, said Tesla’s ESG score had remained “fairly stable” over the past year, but that it has fallen down the ranking as other companies improved their score.
Tesla's lack of a low carbon strategy and codes of business conduct were also noted, along with concerns alluding to issues of discrimination at its factories and the firm’s handling of investigations into deaths and injuries linked to its Autopilot system.
The EV company fell in the bottom 25% of its global industry group peers.
.@SPGlobalRatings has lost their integrity
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) May 18, 2022
Unsurprisingly, this led to a response from Musk on Twitter: "Exxon is rated top ten best in world for environment, social & governance (ESG) by S&P 500, while Tesla didn’t make the list!
"ESG is a scam. It has been weaponized by phony social justice warriors," he said.
Then he later added that the S&P change was "despite Tesla doing more for the environment than any company ever!"
It was noted elsewhere that Musk's latter claim might be classed as "climate disinformation", as other renewable companies would be likely to show they have higher levels of avoided emissions than the EV car manufacturer.
This is simply people misunderstanding the S & G in ESG (Environmental, Social and Governance).
Not everything is about building wind farms or solar, its also about how we approach the world around us - ESPECIALLY IN BUSINESS AND INVESTING:
A short thread ???? https://t.co/9x3hOwjqPL
— Dan ????????☀️⚡ (@cto_block) May 19, 2022
Tesla's impact report claims 6.6 MTCO2-e of avoided emissions through EV usage in 2021.
IRENA's calcs say 36 MTCO2-e of avoided emissions from wind power in Spain, in 2018.
Just to give a scale of things....https://t.co/IgzgjC5Id0
— Ketan Joshi (@KetanJ0) May 18, 2022