What's going on?

Investors have poured $17 billion into sustainability-focused exchange-traded funds so far this year, in hopes all these green initiatives sprouting up everywhere will lead to a golden goose.

What does this mean?

The US government is on a mission to approve $2 trillion of infrastructure spending, which is expected to include a host of clean energy initiatives. And the impact of that environment-first thinking from the world�s biggest economy is already spreading across the globe: analysts are expecting governments and companies to issue $500 billion worth of �green bonds��� an increasingly popular way of financing green initiatives � this year alone. Italy�s already leading the charge, taking $100 billion worth of orders for the $10 billion worth of green bonds it sold last month.

Why should I care?

For markets: Big oil firms are going with the flow.

A global green agenda stands to hit traditional oil and gas firms hard, but some of the world�s biggest polluters are already falling into line. Just look at French oil giant Total, whose clean energy spending over the last five years represented a quarter of the world�s biggest oil companies� low-carbon investments put together. This year, meanwhile, rival Shell has revealed plans to transition to cleaner output, as well as more than halve its �traditional energy� production by 2030.

Zooming in: A fund by any other name might perform as well.

There�s research to show that the top environmental, social, and governance-focused (ESG) funds generate higher returns than their less socially responsible peers, but it�s hard to say exactly why. After all, research from Morgan Stanley found that sustainable funds on average held more growth stocks � think fast-growing tech companies � than their non-ESG peers. And given how well those stocks have done over the last few years, it could be that they�re more responsible for the ESG funds� outperformance than the whole �sustainability� thing is.