I’ll start by saying I don’t trust any bank to give me a list of green investments. Mine has a “pay monthly and we will invest for you” but the list of companies it has are all from BlackRock and have a bunch of US companies, oil and gas giants pretending to have green goals, and techno-fascist companies like Tesla on the list because “they’re going electric”.

My time is limited and I’m not willing to spend hours every day scrutinising companies and initiatives to ensure they are green, sustainable, and socially aware. Following green news, there is news about whatever new battery is in whichever stage, a new company testing a carbo-fibre something improve whatever new thing will turn a turbine, and so on, but some of those companies either aren’t public or so fresh it would be risky to invest.

How do I safely and lazily invest in green European businesses? I’m willing to pay for the service, but not a wild amount as I don’t have a wild amount to invest either. Also, the return should be more than just letting it sit in my savings account. Risk is fine, an average return of 2% isn’t.

  • BastingChemina@slrpnk.netEnglish
    5·
    28 days ago

    One option could be to find a bank that you actually trust.

    If you don’t want someone else to invest for you and want an easy way to invest I guess the best way is to find one or several indexes that fit your requirements and invest in those.

    For example there is the "MSCI Europe Select Green 50 Index

  • atro_city@fedia.ioOP
    4·
    28 days ago

    I’m evaluating a few options now. Mostly by reading their statements, how they work, costs, what the reporting on them looks like (positive, negative - especially negative is important), how long they have existed, and which projects they have funded.

    Supposedly there are also Green Bonds and Green Funds, but I haven’t finished reading investopedia. If somebody knows how to buy those, I’m all ears. (and I’ll finish reading investopedia).

    • boonhet@sopuli.xyzEnglish
      1·
      26 days ago

      Thanks for doing the research. I did two small investments through Goparity, as I liked the diversity of projects and the statistics they provide on past projects. I may check out a few of the others too.

      If these pan out, I may do slightly larger sums through my company. Allows me to use pre-tax money so the impact is greater (more money available to invest) and one day when I’d like to actually withdraw the profits from the company, I’ll have to pay taxes anyway, so really I’m just deferring taxation, not avoiding it.

  • Taalnazi@lemmy.worldEnglish
    31·
    28 days ago

    Find an independent place that focuses on research of whether investments are green or not, and which respect human rights.

    Some banks provide a transparency list of what they invest in. ASN Bank and Triodos for example would be relatively decent candidates.

    I wish there were an investment list though, of DUWOCS (decentralised, unionised and worker-owned co-ops), so that we could pool our strength into those.

    A possibility would be non-voting, non-tradeable and worker-preferred shares, where outside investors only get a bit of the profit back. Public loan funds are another option, that loan out money to those cooperatives and then pay back return on interest to you, in the form of e.g. paying something for you that you need (like a sort of coupon) to improve your life standards.

    Part of the returns then also could go to spreading worker-owned cooperatives, and gathering them into federations of those.

    That could motivate a move toward a gift economy.

  • rbn@sopuli.xyzEnglish
    2·
    28 days ago

    You could also handpick single shares of companies that you can get behind. Higher risk and more work than ETFs, but no one else gets to decide for you.

  • eldain@feddit.nlEnglish
    2·
    28 days ago

    There are private, closed investment funds for things like windmills in the north sea, but these are of course super non-diversified and non-liquid. You could also try to find an etf that matches your preferences as much as possible and use a cheap/free neobroker to buy it, for example: Amundi MSCI Europe SRI Climate Paris Aligned UCITS ETF DR ©, you can see the full list of holdings at Amundis website

    I would go the etf route, because it is diversified and you can get your funds out at any time, you also don’t have minumum or maximum amounts of investment. In some countries you can even do it tax free as a pension.

  • ExLisper@lemmy.curiana.netEnglish
    2·
    27 days ago

    You don’t. You can’t just dump money into green companies and expect it to grow. Green companies don’t magically increase in value just because they are green. You still have to do the difficult work of evaluating the company. Without it you’re just throwing money at random. The lazy way is to invest in diversified funds which for sure will include companies that are not green. With only green companies you can’t have both lazy and safe.

  • HaiZhung@feddit.orgEnglish
    2·
    28 days ago

    If you have enough cash to spare and enough time so you don’t mind it being committed: Carbon equity, also does private equity.

    Be mindful though that the risk is high, you need lots of cash (>20k), and your money will only come back after ~10yrs

  • boonhet@sopuli.xyzEnglish
    1·
    26 days ago

    Okay, first off, BlackRock isn’t as bad as you think, their controversies section on Wikipedia literally lists being too focused on ESG. They’re far from perfect, but they get all the flak while Blackstone is the one buying up entire neighborhoods worth of single-family homes so they can jack up rent. BlackRock is more of a passive investor, they make most of their money by selling investment services, rather than making money by investing it in companies directly. Usually. But of course I understand wanting your fees to go to a European-registered publicly traded company rather than an American-registered publicly traded company. I was actually looking for more eurocentric ETFs sold by European providers a while back.

    European alternatives to BlackRock’s iShares are Amundi (French), Xtrackers (DWS Group, 80% owned by Deutsche Bank which is almost shadier than BlackRock if you ask me) and BNP Paribas Easy (French). There are some smaller ones too. Xtrackers seems to have the most variety, but don’t discount the others just yet. BNP Paribas Easy tends to have lower fees and Amundi has a great selection too.

    Now, here’s the bummer: Buying shares in ETFs doesn’t do shit for the companies whose shares the ETF is going to acquire. First off, if you just buy your ETF shares off a market, you’re betting on the value of the ETF going up, but the money you spend goes to the people who held those shares. If you buy the shares in such a way that new shares are created in the ETF, that has a more direct effect on the share prices of the companies that ETF holds. But even then, you’re not REALLY giving them any money. You’re making a bet on them. The share price going up might have a positive effect if they’re trying to raise money by creating new shares, but that’s about it. Really, it’s just a way to feel good about yourself more than anything.