Consumer Advisor

Sustainable investing used to feel like one big happy family: buy anything labeled “green” or “ESG” and you could sleep well knowing you were saving the planet while still making money. 2025 has shattered that illusion. While broad-market ESG funds (the ones that simply tilt the S&P 500 toward better-behaved companies) have chugged along with respectable but unremarkable gains of 22–26% YTD—basically riding the coattails of Nvidia, Microsoft, and Apple—dedicated clean energy ETFs have left them in the dust, posting eye-watering returns of 30–50% in the same period. Lower interest rates, explosive electricity demand from AI data centers, revived nuclear momentum, and a global rush into solar and batteries have turned pure-play green energy funds (ICLN, TAN, QCLN) into some of the hottest performers of the year. Meanwhile, many ESG strategies remain stubbornly mega-cap tech h...