Green House Gas Emissions Reporting and Management in Global Top Emitting Countries and Companies: Volume 11

This chapter outlines the need for global actions on mitigating greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and introduces the six chapters contained in this issue. The impact of GHG emissions on the environment undoubtedly exacerbates the consequence of climate change and is not constrained within the borders of the emitting countries and companies. Emitting countries (and companies) export much of the harm created by GHG emissions given that the earth's atmosphere intermixes globally. GHG top emitters are not necessarily the victims of its consequences, since the extent to which each country is affected by adverse weather such as floods depends on the distribution of climate vulnerability rather than jurisdictional emission. Hence, global collective actions are required to find plausible solutions to reduce GHG emissions. This issue consists of one literature review and five empirical chapters. The insight from the literature review highlights the dearth of studies addressing GHG emissions reporting and management in Africa and the Middle East. The first three empirical chapters examine the efficacy of corporate governance in facilitating GHG disclosures and performance in China, the United States and India. The fifth chapter examines the effect of the Paris Agreement on climate change disclosures in South Africa. There is mixed evidence as to how corporate governance affects GHG disclosure, but it is clear that the Paris Agreement had a positive impact on climate change disclosures in South Africa. The sixth chapter examines the social determinants of GHG in top 100 emitting countries and documents evidence that energy use determines the extent of GHG emissions in both developed and developing countries. However, the results show that other social determinants such as urbanisation, literacy and corruption contribute in varying ways to GHG emissions in developing countries. Taken together, the collection of chapters in this issue provides incremental understanding to the effect of GHG emissions and necessary actions that can help in mitigating them.

In this chapter, we conduct a metadata analysis of articles published in accounting, business and finance journals ranked by Australian Business Dean Council (ABDC), and benchmarked against the Chartered Association of Business Schools (ABS) ranking, that discuss firm- and country-level greenhouse gas (GHG) emission practices and reporting. Number of publications on GHG research, research methods, number of citations and ratio, across countries and continents are some of the topics we cover. We employ a list of articles on accounting, business and finance journals ranked A* and A in the ABDC journal rankings from 2015 to 2022. The study uses a structured literature review to analyse 74 papers on GHG reporting practices at the firm- and country level. Although this line of enquiry is still nascent and developing, the study found underrepresentation of Africa and the Middle East in GHG literature generally. In addition, majority of the articles examined also concentrate on quantitative methods. Most of the articles on GHG research are A-ranked in the ABDC ranking scheme. It was also found that few studies focus on the countries and companies with the highest emissions. While there has been some progress in interrogating GHG across the globe, there is still much room for further research. A key area of future research is exploring the GHG reporting practices in the African and the Middle Eastern sub-regions. There is also a need to examine countries and companies with high emissions. A further study needs to explore the benefits of other research methods in addition to quantitative methods, as different research methods could yield different insights that would enhance research-based conclusions.

Greenhouse gas (GHG) emission has a detrimental impact on climate change. There is an increasing trend for firms to use disclosure to signal stakeholders about its environmental responsibilities and performance in dealing with climate change. China is one of the countries producing the most carbon emissions. Over the last decade, Chinese state-owned enterprises (SOEs) are becoming important players in international trade. However, the existing literature provides limited evidence on how Chinese SOEs influence GHG disclosure. Through the lens of stakeholder–agency theory, this chapter studies the top 300 listed firms to examine the relationship between Chinese SOEs and the likelihood of GHG disclosure. The result suggests a negative relationship between Chinese SOEs and the likelihood of GHG disclosure. This could be explained as a consequence of the managers' political self-interests, economic and policy-oriented decision-making process and the power differentials between the government and SOE managers. This research extends the GHG literature to Chinese SOEs context, providing direct evidence on how state ownership impacts on GHG disclosure.

The purpose of this chapter is to investigate the relationship between corporate governance and greenhouse gas (GHG) disclosures using evidence from the United States.

The study is based on a sample of 168 firms listed on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) in the United States. Panel data are used covering a period from 2017 to 2020 involving 672 observations.

The results indicate that board size has a positive and significant effect on GHG disclosures while the effect of ownership concentration and insider ownership is negative and significant. The proportion of non-executive directors is not significant. In terms of control variables, firm size and financial slack have a positive effect on GHG disclosures.

The study results add evidence to the already existing literature on the relationship between corporate governance and GHG disclosures using evidence from the United States.

Utilising the resource dependency theory, this study investigates the impact of board interlocks (CEOs' interlocks, women board interlocks, independent board interlocks and total board interlocks) on carbon emissions performance in India.

This research applies varieties of regression methods comprising robust least squares, generalised method of moments and Heckman's regression on a final sample of 63 of India's top 200 Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE) listed companies that voluntarily participate in the Carbon Disclosure Project's (CDP) Climate Change Program and disclose their climate change data for years 2013–2020.

We provide strong evidence for a strong negative association between CEOs' interlocks and women board interlocks on carbon emissions performance. Independent and total board interlocks are not found to significantly affect carbon emissions performance.

Our sample is restricted to the proportion of the top 200 BSE firms that voluntarily submit their carbon emissions data to CDP. Also, the study's focus is India, limiting the generalisation of our findings to other emerging economies.

The study's findings provide valuable insight for regulators and corporate board of directors on the important role of CEOs and women board who interlock with other firms in steering the carbon emissions reduction. Specifically, the corporate board of directors should encourage CEOs to build more networks through outside board memberships. The regulators should revisit the Companies Act, 2013 and the Securities Exchange Board of India (SEBI) regulation to increase the number of multiple directorships of CEOs and women board of directors.

This study responds to the dearth of literature on the efficacy of board interlocks on carbon emissions performance in emerging economies.

This study investigates the impact of the Paris Agreement (and other factors) on carbon information disclosures to the Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP).

A sample of South African listed companies was selected and data analysed from 2013 to 2017. A random effect panel data model using SPSS was used to determine whether the Paris Agreement had an effect on carbon information disclosure.

The results indicate that (1) the Paris Agreement, as an example of an intergovernmental coordination initiative, is significant in creating awareness and increasing the carbon disclosures to the CDP. Furthermore, (2) in terms of the other factors examined, providing incentives for managing climate change and assessing climate risks further into the future improves disclosure quality, while no relationship was found between the CDP score and the approval by key management personnel.

This research examines CDP disclosures for an emerging market before and after the signing of the Paris Agreement.

This research shows the importance of supportive government policy. Furthermore, a commitment to climate change disclosure is manageable and achievable and needs to be implemented at the management level.

This chapter investigates the social determinants (urbanisation, population, literacy and corruption) of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in the top 100 developed and developing emitting countries. The data were collected from central repositories for the different variables explored for the period 2012–2020 in a cross-country analysis. Fixed effects ordinary least squares (OLS) regression was used to analyse the data. The results for all top 100 countries and developing countries show that urbanisation and corruption are significantly positive and negative determinants of GHG emissions, respectively. In addition, literacy is a significant positive determinant of GHG emissions in developing countries but not in the top 100 and developed countries. Population is not significant in the top 100 developed and developing countries. The results for the control variables suggest that primary energy consumption is a positive significant determinant of GHG emissions in the top 100 developed and developing countries. However, gross domestic product (GDP) is not a significant determinant of GHG emissions. The findings have important policy implications.