Overcome your data hurdles with the ESG Data Cartography!
The Institut Louis Bachelier (ILB) has recently launched an open-source ESG Data Cartography in order to facilitate practitioners’ access to extra-financial data.
A little bit of context
Working in sustainable finance is often a real headache when it comes to finding and using data. This statement holds true whether you are a private practitioner, a researcher or anyone involved in related subjects for public institutions or NGOs.
In terms of data, the main issues that arise are:
- Lack of data/low filling rate: data rarely exist and when it does, it is not usually exhaustive.
- Cost of data: most common sources are established private data providers with heavy access cost.
- No heterogeneity/robustness: the lack of common standards and international coordination implies that data is not comparable among providers (but standardisation is on its way with EFRAG, ISSB…).
- Low interoperability: professionals have to combine several databases and spend a lot of time processing and merging the data.
Other issues include lack of granularity, delayed and low frequency updates, high proportion of non reported/non structured data, etc. (these come from answers to surveys to practitioners with 100+ responses)
Data providers, governments and international organizations are well aware of these limitations and there are numerous initiatives addressing one or more of these pain points such as Network for Greening the Financial System (NGFS) consultation, Net Zero Data Public Utility (NZDPU) project, PRI Data Portal, United Nations reports… and the Institut Louis Bachelier (hosting research projects, involved in the EU Taxonomy and NZDPU advisory board member).
The problem we aim to tackle
At the Institut Louis Bachelier, we do not have the means to solve these issues on our own. In the context of the PLADIFES project, we aim at facilitating research in the field of green and sustainable finance by providing data services such as data access and/or data creation. Yet, before reinventing the wheel, we needed a clear mapping of:
- What currently exists in terms of data;
- Where are the gaps/which are the less treated subjects;
- When is there a free/open-source option;
- How to discriminate between available sources (coverage, sources, …).
We came across Environmental Finance ESG Data Guide, WEEFIN Data Providers Overview, NGFS Directory and some gap reports, but felt that these options were not satisfying to date, at least for all types of sustainable finance practitioners. Thus, we developed a mapping of all entities having ESG (in a very broad sense) data and/or methodologies, with the following characteristics:
- Free and no registration is needed,
- Dynamically updated by the data providers,
- Gives an exhaustive overview of all potential sources (from main ESG data providers to alternative/non-conventional platforms),
- Comes with a large and granular use cases classification, to know “Who does what”,
- Provides summarized information on each provider, highlighting their main characteristics.
This tool is available on our website since September 2022: ESG Data Cartography.
The ESG Data cartography
The tool is composed of a summary and two main sections. The introduction contains a link to the description, which provides:
- A more detailed introduction,
- A description of the available content,
- Specificities for data providers (how to update their information),
- The exhaustive list of use cases (to date, see below),
- A complete glossary on all current use cases.
Impatient users can directly use the two available ways to interrogate the mapping. The first one is a split packed bubble visualisation, allowing to get an overview of the providers addressing a specific use case by iteratively clicking on the bubbles. It is a fast way to identify new candidates as well as more/less covered topics. By clicking on a provider, one gets redirected to its overview page, with more details about it.
The second interface is a more classic (and maybe a bit dull?), it is a table with four columns that can be filtered:
- Data provider: the entity name and logo (and eventually with its acronym and owning institution).
- Provider type: the kind of institution (among 15 predefined such as Index provider, financial data provider, specialized providers, etc.).
- Associated use cases: the use cases for which the entity can provide data and/or methodologies.
- Accessibility: if the data is open-source, free, partially free or proprietary.
Search and selection bars are the main ways to query the underlying database. Similarly to the bubbles, one can open the providers overview pages by clicking on their names (in green, underlined).
Available information per providers is (if relevant/known):
Mandatory
- Name;
- Provider type;
- Quick description;
- Logo;
- Associated use cases;
- Accessibility;
Optional
- Acronym;
- Corporate ownership;
- Geographic coverage;
- Sector coverage;
- Issuers covered (type of issuers and coverage);
- Update frequency;
- Database starting year;
- Collected data sources;
- Link to the provider’s website.
And now?
Since September 2022, anyone can use the Cartography. Some financial practitioners, researchers and students are already using it, but its popularity could be largely increased! Thus, if you are a potential user, feel free to try it out (link), and share it around, to facilitate your own and others’ ESG journey! And for providers not included yet, contact us to be added, this tool aims to continuously improve and stay up to date!
Besides, we are open to all kinds of sponsorships (participation to the funding and/or the dissemination of the tool), as long as it does not raise any conflict of interest. Therefore, do not hesitate to contact us!
FAQ:
- What is the Cartography for ? It is a tool aiming at facilitating data providers identification, comparison and selection.
- Can I use the Cartography to download data directly? No, this is just a mapping, you will need to go to the provider’s website.
- Can I use the Cartography to get dataset level information? No, we decided to stay at the provider level, for the time being. (Please check the NGFS Directory for such an attempt)
- How was this mapping created? First, the mapping was based on data providers answers to a survey, and available information on their website. Now, it is up to them to contact us and update their pages.
- Is there some kind of quality assessment? No, in order to respect intellectual property and to reach a maximum coverage, we could not go to the dataset mesh and thus assess the data quality/usability.
- How was/is this tool financed (since it is free)? This tool was financed by the French National Agency of Research (ANR), in the context of the PLADIFES project (EquipEx+ ANR-21-ESRE-0036). For maintenance and improvements, we are open to all kinds of sponsorships, as long as it does not raise any conflict of interest.
- How is the governance organised? The PLADIFES Team is responsible for the governance of the Cartography. Please contact them for any remarks/questions.
- How can I be added to the mapping? Please contact us to be added.
- FAQ will be regularly updated (last update: December 2022).
Final word
If you are a financial practitioner interested in ESG, and looking for advanced training and/or practical methodology developments (on alignment, impact risk, …), you can contact the ESG Lab, our structure dedicated to operational R&D on green and sustainable finance subjects at the Institut Louis Bachelier.
Acknowledgements
We would like to give credit and a special thanks to Maria Villalonga Goñalons, main co-developer of the ESG Data Cartography with Thibaud BARREAU (author of this article and project manager of the Cartography).
