Correlation of different providers' ESG scores in 2017, by category and agency

According to an academic study conducted in 2020, when considered in terms of pairwise comparisons there was a large amount of divergence between five of the major environmental, social and governance (ESG) ratings agencies - both in terms of the overall scores, and and each of the E, S and G pillars. Some companies saw a relatively high degree of similarity, such as Sustainalytics and Vigeo, whose overall ESG scores had a correlation of 0.77 (out of one). However, much less similarity was seen between Sustainalytics and MSCI, whose scores had a correlation of 0.53. This difference was even greater when considering scores for the individual E, S and G categories, which had correlations of 0.33, 0.29 and 0.34 respectively.