Continuing this year's proliferation of cost-effective environmental, social and governance (ESG) exchange-traded funds, DWS added to its ESG lineup Wednesday with the launch of the Xtrackers S&P 500 ESG ETF (NYSE: SNPE).

What Happened

The Xtrackers S&P 500 ESG ETF tracks the S&P 500 ESG Index. As Benzinga recently reported, “S&P Dow Jones launched the index earlier this year and its approach to ESG investing is traditional in that it excludes tobacco companies, civilian firearms manufacturers and companies with low scores based on the United Nations Global Compact for responsible business.”

Something else notable about the S&P 500 ESG Index is that S&P Dow Jones recently booted Facebook Inc. FB 0.98% from that benchmark due to the social media giants poor social and governance scores.

Why It's Important

The new SNPE allocates over 27% of its weight to the technology sector and a combined 28.23% of its weight to the health care and consumer discretionary sectors. SNPE is home to 319 stocks. The financial services and industrial sectors combine for over 20% of the fund's weight.

The new fund came to market with nearly $25 million in assets under management, continuing a DWS tradition of bringing ESG funds to market with robust levels of seed capital. Earlier this year, the issuer launched the Xtrackers MSCI USA ESG Leaders Equity ETF USSG with over $800 million in assets. Today, that fund has $1.18 billion in assets, making it one of the largest ESG ETFs in the U.S.

SNPE excludes tobacco companies, civilian firearms manufacturers and other companies “if they fall within the bottom 5% of rankings based on the United Nations Global Compact or the bottom 25% of MSCI ESG scores within their respective industry groups,” according to ETF.com.

What's Next

SNPE charges 0.11% per year, or $11 on a $10,000 investment, making it one of the least expensive ESG ETFs available to U.S. investors.