From Exclusion to Solutions
To understand where sustainable investing is going, you have to understand where it came from, so the book traces the arc. It begins with the early days of socially responsible investing, when values-driven investors mostly worked by exclusion, screening out tobacco, weapons, and later fossil fuels. That was an important start, but exclusion alone is a blunt instrument. Knowing what you don’t want to own tells you nothing about what you do want to own.
From there, I walk through the rise of ESG, the framework that promised to fold environmental, social, and governance factors into mainstream analysis, and I’m candid about both its value and its limits. ESG data can be genuinely useful for understanding risk. But ESG was built largely as a risk-management overlay for conventional investing, not as a way to pursue impact, and treating a middling ESG score as proof of virtue is exactly the kind of category error that fuels greenwashing.
What I advocate instead is a positive, solutions-based approach, one that starts with the question, “What do we want more of in the world?” and then invests deliberately in the companies building it: clean energy, sustainable agriculture, water infrastructure, the circular economy, healthier communities. This is the heart of the book. It reframes sustainable investing away from a defensive posture of avoiding bad actors and toward an intentional one of funding the transition already underway. Once you make that shift, the whole practice starts to feel less like a series of trade-offs and more like an investment thesis about the future.
Redefining SRI, After Hurricane Helene
I thought I understood resilience until Hurricane Helene tore through Asheville. These mountains are home for me and for Earth Equity, and in September 2024, we watched a storm that “wasn’t supposed to reach us” wash away roads, businesses, and neighbors’ livelihoods. Climate change stopped being an abstraction in a research report and became the water overflowing the banks of the French Broad River. I saw a failure of our communications, transportation, and utility infrastructure. We didn’t have potable water for nearly three months. It’s one thing to build climate-aware portfolios for a living; it’s another to live through the thing you’ve been investing against.
That experience sharpened how I define the work, and it’s why the book returns to a simple reframing of three familiar letters. For decades, “SRI” was shorthand for socially responsible investing, a term rooted in what we screen out. I believe that an evolution was necessary to mean something more forward-looking: sustainable, resilient, and innovative. Sustainable, because our capital should support a livable planet rather than undermine it. Resilient, because the companies and communities that endure are the ones preparing for a changing climate instead of pretending it isn’t coming. And innovation, because the solutions we actually need, in clean energy, water, agriculture, and adaptation, will come from the businesses bold enough to build them.
Resilience, I realized, standing in the aftermath, isn’t just a quality you want in a portfolio. It’s an investment thesis for the world we’re actually entering.
Confronting the Returns Myth
I can’t count how many times someone has told me, with total confidence, that sustainable investing means sacrificing performance. It’s one of the most persistent myths in finance, and the book confronts it directly. The reality is more nuanced and far more encouraging. Values-aligned portfolios don’t require you to leave returns on the table as the price of a clear conscience. Like any investment approach, they need to be built thoughtfully, with attention to diversification, valuation, and risk. But the notion that caring about the planet is inherently a drag on performance simply doesn’t hold up, and I explain why and how, without asking anyone to take it on faith.
Just as important is learning to spot the difference between authentic sustainability and its imitation. A meaningful portion of the book is devoted to greenwashing: how to recognize it, why it persists, and what questions to ask so you’re not fooled by a green label slapped on a conventional product. This, more than anything, is the practical skill I want readers to walk away with. In a market crowded with lookalikes, the ability to tell real from repackaged is what separates an investor who is genuinely aligned from one who only believes they are.
Who It’s Really For
Yes, the book speaks directly to financial advisors and planners, and I’ve tried to give them a genuine playbook: how to talk with clients about values, how to construct solutions-based portfolios, how to build and run an advisory practice grounded in sustainability rather than bolted onto it. Advisors are a leverage point. When they understand this work, they can guide thousands of clients toward it.
But you don’t need a CFP to get value from these pages. If you’re an individual investor trying to make sense of your options, a nonprofit steward wrestling with an endowment, or simply someone who suspects your money could be doing better work in the world, this book was written with you in mind. I’ve deliberately kept the jargon in check and the ideas accessible, because the barrier to values-aligned investing has too often been a wall of specialized language that makes people feel they need permission to participate. You don’t.
The Bigger Picture
What I hope comes through, more than any single strategy, is a sense of possibility. Sustainable investing is not a niche or a fad or a marketing gimmick. It’s a maturing discipline with real methodologies, real track records, and a real role to play in the defining challenges of our time. Done well, it lets people align their portfolios with their principles without pretending the two were ever in conflict.
That’s the promise I’ve spent my career pursuing, and it’s the promise at the center of this book. If you’ve ever looked at your investments and felt a quiet disconnect between what you own and what you believe, The Sustainable Investor is an invitation to close that gap, thoughtfully, credibly, and with your eyes open. My hope is that you finish it not just better informed but genuinely convinced that investing like you mean it is both possible and worth doing.
You can find more information and order The Sustainable Investor book here: https://www.sustainableinvestorbook.com
Article by Peter Krull, CSRIC, is a Partner and the Director of Sustainable Investing at Earth Equity Advisors, a Prime Capital Financial Company.
He is also the 2024 InvestmentNews ESG/Responsible Investing Advisor of the Year*, and a 2025 InvestmentNews top 50 5-Star Independent Advisor as well as numerous other awards. He is a well-known thought leader in the sustainable investment industry, advocating for fossil-fuel-free, sustainable, resilient, and innovation (SRI) investing in the media and at conferences.
He is the author of The Sustainable Investor: Responsible, Impactful, And Values-Driven Investment Strategies for Financial Advisors as well as the host of the podcast, Dollars & Change: An Expert’s Guide to Sustainable and Responsible Investing.
Practicing sustainable investing for over 20 years, Peter believes in the power of positive, solutions-based investing. At Earth Equity, Peter focuses on creating and managing the firm’s SRI investment portfolios, educating investors and advisors, and writing thought leadership pieces.
* Award was for the 2023 year, and no compensation was given.