In 2023, Larry Fink stopped saying ESG. The chief executive of BlackRock, the world’s largest asset manager, said the acronym had been weaponised by the far left and the far right alike.

In January 2025, the firm went further. It left the Net Zero Asset Managers initiative, telling clients that its membership had caused confusion and invited legal inquiries from public officials. Days later, the initiative paused its operations.

Yet BlackRock insisted the exit changed nothing about how it builds products or manages client portfolios, and that its portfolio managers would keep assessing material climate risks. Less talk, the same work. There is now a word for it, and new research suggests the stock market likes it rather a lot.

What Is Greenhushing?

Greenwashing is familiar enough: a company claims more environmental progress than it has made. Greenhushing is the mirror image. A company keeps doing the work but stops talking about it.

“Greenwashing is when you talk more than you do, and greenhushing is when you do more than you talk,” says Serguei Netessine, professor of operations, information and decisions at The Wharton School.

The reasons for keeping quiet are not hard to find. In the US, climate commitments have become a political target. In Europe and Canada, new laws demand evidence for every green claim. “Management chooses to say relatively little because talking has become costly,” Netessine says. A claim can attract politicians, regulators and lawyers, and some firms simply prefer not to tell competitors what is working.

The Wharton study on what corporate silence is worth

Netessine’s new working paper, “Value of Silence: Determinants and Consequences of Greenhushing,” puts a number on the gap between what companies say and what they do. His co-authors are Sonam Singh of the University of South Florida’s Muma College of Business, Ashwin Malshe of the Carlos Alvarez College of Business at the University of Texas at San Antonio, Yakov Bart of Northeastern University’s D’Amore-McKim School of Business, and Anatoli Colicev of the University of Liverpool.

The team analysed more than 30 million sentences from the earnings calls of 3,727 US firms between 2005 and 2021. They then compared how much executives talked about the environment with TruValue Labs scores, which track what news outlets, regulators and civil society report about each firm’s environmental record.

The results are striking. A one-standard-deviation rise in greenhushing was associated with a 2.29 percentage point increase in three-month abnormal stock returns, worth about $238 million for the average firm in the sample. The same shift towards greenwashing was associated with a 2.29 point fall.

The gap between conduct and communication also grew modestly but significantly after 2017, a period the authors treat as more politicised. Greenhushing was more likely among highly leveraged firms and those in fiercely competitive industries.

“What we take from all of this is not that investors love silence. Investors appear to reward credibility,” says Netessine. “Investors seem to care more about the walk than the talk.”

When climate claims become a legal liability

If silence can pay, overstatement now has a price beyond the share price. On 23 October 2025, a Paris court found that TotalEnergies had misled consumers with claims on its French website about its ambition to reach carbon neutrality by 2050 and to be a major player in the energy transition.

The case was brought by Greenpeace France, Friends of the Earth France and Notre Affaire à Tous. The court ordered the company to display the ruling on its French website for 180 days. Friends of the Earth France called it the first time a major oil and gas company had been condemned by a court for climate greenwashing.

In fairness to TotalEnergies, the court judged only three of the 44 challenged statements misleading, and dismissed the claims against its corporate communications. But the three it upheld were the headline promises. The company said it would not appeal.

Why we distrust load climate pledges

European research helps explain why investors have learned to distrust loud climate pledges. Judith Walls, professor at the University of St.Gallen’s Institute of Responsible Innovation, Sustainability and Energy, worked with colleague Virginie Cauderay and Mirón Avidan at Chatham University and Glen Dowell at Cornell University’s Johnson School to track the climate targets of 105 S&P 500 companies from 2010 to 2021.

They found that 55% of emission reduction targets changed over time with no explanation. In carbon-intensive industries the figure rose to 74%. Consistency mattered: companies that kept their targets stable achieved them 86% of the time, against 30% for those that kept changing them.

In the article, “Greenwashing at major US Companies?” the researchers identify four habits:

• Goalpost shifting: changing a target quietly before the deadline arrives
• Number fudging: revising past emissions figures without saying why
• Target disbanding: dropping a goal and replacing it with a new one
• Hindsight target setting: announcing targets already met or nearly met

“Laws that forbid greenwashing are starting to come into force,” says Walls, “and thus inconsistent disclosure on climate pledges could soon become a source of risk for companies.”

Why high ESG scores can mean higher greenwashing risk

If talk gets ahead of conduct, the ratings industry may be part of the reason. Researchers led by Manuel Kathan and Sebastian Utz of the University of Augsburg and Gregor Dorfleitner of the University of Regensburg studied greenwashing allegations against the companies of the STOXX Europe 600.

Their conclusion is uncomfortable for anyone who invests by ESG rating. Allegations were most common among large companies with high ESG scores. The scores tracked how good a company’s environmental record looked, not the impact it actually had. Investors chasing high ratings, the authors warn, may be unknowingly increasing their exposure to greenwashing.

A companion study by the same group examined stock market reactions to 296 greenwashing events at European companies. Allegations tied to regulatory compliance triggered the most consistent negative reactions. That is the kind of risk TotalEnergies ran into in Paris, and the kind Wharton’s greenhushers appear to be avoiding.

Silence on climate is not proof of virtue

None of this means a quiet company is a green one. In June 2024, the Pathways Alliance, a consortium of Canada’s six largest oil sands producers, removed all content from its website and social media. It cited a new federal law requiring evidence for environmental claims.

The alliance said the move had nothing to do with the accuracy of its claims. Critics were less generous. Environmental Defence said it showed the group lacked evidence for its story, and the carbon capture network at the heart of its net-zero pledge still had no final investment decision.

The Wharton paper is careful on this point. It does not find that silence alone creates value. Saying little only pays when outside evidence shows the work is being done.

More meaningful environmental communication

For executives, the lesson is not to go silent but to stop letting communication run ahead of conduct. “You should manage your environmental communication the same way you manage your financial communication,” says Netessine. “Don’t make claims you can’t support.” St.Gallen’s findings add a corollary: if a target has to change, explain why.

For investors, the advice is to look past both the volume of the pitch and the polish of the rating. A company that has left a climate alliance is not necessarily doing nothing. One that trumpets its green credentials at every turn may be doing far less than it appears.

“Don’t confuse communication intensity with quality,” says Netessine. “And don’t invest in rhetoric.”

One company stopped talking and kept walking. The other kept talking until a judge noticed.

Interested in this topic? You might also like…