Search results

Climate change and carbon emissions are top of mind in all facets of society. This study aims to investigate what the world’s top brands are saying about carbon emissions and greenhouse gases (GHG). Through this inquiry, the authors hope to better understand what brands are saying, doing and if their actions are clear. Furthermore, the authors seek to uncover practices that may deter or enhance a brand’s effectiveness in communicating its current and future initiatives.

Each of the world’s top 50 brands’ (Forbes, 2020 Rankings) websites were assessed using a content analysis methodology. Key constructs and themes were identified first through a broad assessment, leading to a set of parameters (content items) that were used to assess each brand’s website. The results were then summarized.

Almost all of the world’s Top 50 brands attempt to articulate their current accomplishments and goals relative to carbon emissions and GHG. Generally, carbon falls under a broader discussion of their sustainability initiatives and objectives. While extensive, information on carbon emissions possesses a variety of terms for measures and initiatives, goal setting and actions. Stakeholders may find the information to be ambiguous and of limited use.

There are few, if any, assessments of how major brands communicate their current and future carbon emissions initiatives. The study uncovers tendencies and provides managers with practices that may enhance the effectiveness of their brand’s carbon emissions communications.

The current research strives to shed light on how ownership structure can impact carbon emission disclosure.

The present study is based on S&P BSE 500 Indian firms. Using manual content analysis, carbon emission disclosure data were collected from a final sample of 318 nonfinancial Indian firms over seven years, i.e. from 2016–17 to 2022–23, having 2,226 firm-year observations. The panel regression has been employed to examine the association between ownership structure and carbon emissions disclosure.

The results of the study suggest that ownership structure variables, such as institutional and foreign ownership, exert a positive and significant influence on carbon emission disclosure. Conversely, block-holder ownership is negatively associated with carbon emission disclosure.

This study enriches the emerging literature on environmental disclosure, climate change, carbon emission disclosure and ownership structure.

The present research work provides treasured acumens to corporate managers, investors, regulators and policymakers as the study corroborates that ownership structure has an imperative role in firms' carbon emission disclosure.

Existing literature has determined the impact of ownership structure on environmental disclosure. In contrast, the current research extends the climate change literature by providing novel insights into how ownership structure can influence firms’ carbon emission disclosure. Moreover, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, the present study is the first to scrutinize the relationship between ownership structure and carbon emission disclosure in the Indian context.

Scholars and practitioners have long debated carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions reduction via setting double-carbon goals of peak emissions and carbon neutrality in China. Our study, based on dynamic capability and resource dependence theory (RDT), explores whether digital transformation (DT) affects carbon emissions reduction (CER), and the role of operations and supply chain management (OSCM) factors in this relationship.

The samples are constructed with 454 A-shared listed manufacturing firms with complete financial data from 2010–2021. Regression models with fixed effects are applied to estimate the potential parameters.

We find that DT promotes CER. The performance output of CER is strengthened when supplier concentration and customer concentration are high. In contrast, the performance output of CER is weaker when environmental uncertainty is high.

The findings of our study enrich the literature on CER in Chinese manufacturing firms and highlight DT and OSCM factors as important drivers influencing CER practices.

Although intellectual capital (IC) and human dynamic capabilities (HDCs) play a significant role in decarbonization processes, their measurement and reporting is under-researched. Hence, this study aims to identify the link between HDCs, carbon accounting and integrated reporting (IR) in the transition processes, investigating IC and HDCs in decarbonization processes to achieve net-zero business models (n-ZBMs).

A systematic literature review with a concise bibliometric analysis is conducted on 229 articles, published from 1990 to 2023 in Scopus database and Google Scholar. Reviewing data on publications, journals, authors and citations and analysing the article content, this study identifies the main search trends, providing a new conceptual model and future research propositions.

The results reveal that the literature has rarely focussed on carbon accounting in terms of IC and HDCs. Additionally, firms face pressure from institutions and stakeholders regarding legitimacy and transparency, necessitating a response considering IR and requiring n-ZBMs to be developed through IC and HDCs to meet social and environmental requirements.

Not only does this study link IC with HDCs to address carbon emissions through decarbonization practices, which has never been addressed in the literature to date, but also provides novel recommendations and propositions through which firms can sustainably transition to being net-zero emission firms, thereby gaining competitive advantage and contributing to the nation’s sustainability goals.

Accelerating the green economy’s transition is a practical means of lowering emissions and conserving energy, and its effects on the greenhouse effect merit careful consideration. Growing environmental deterioration has compelled decision-makers to prioritize sustainability alongside economic growth. Policymakers and the business community are interested in green investment (GRE), but its effects on social and environmental sustainability are still unknown. Based on this, this study aims at looking into the time-frequency interplay between GRE and carbon dioxide emissions and assessing the impacts of economic growth, financial globalization and fossil fuel energy (FUE) usage on this nexus in Vietnam across different time and frequency domains.

The authors employ continuous wavelets, cross wavelet transforms, wavelet coherence, Rua’s wavelet correlation and wavelet-based Granger causality tests to capture how the domestic variance and covariance of two-time series co-vary as well as the co-movement interdependence between two variables in the time-frequency domain.

The results shed new light on the fact that GRE will increase the levels of environmental quality in Vietnam in the short and medium run and there is a bidirectional causality between the two indicators across different time and frequencies. In addition, when the authors observe the effect of economic growth, financial globalization and fossil fuel energy consumption on this interplay, the findings suggest that, in different time and frequencies, any joined positive change in these indicators will move the CO₂ emissions-GRE nexus.

Policymakers and governments can greatly benefit from this topic by utilizing the function of economic institutions in capital control of GRE and CO₂ emissions and modifying the impact of GRE on the greenhouse effect by accelerating the green growth of economic industries.

The current work contributes to the current literature on GRE and CO₂ emissions in several dimensions: (1) considering the sustainable development in Vietnam, by employing a new single-country dataset of GRE index, this paper aims to contribute to the growing body of research on the factors that influence CO₂ emissions, as well as to provide a detailed explanation for the relationship between GRE and CO₂ emissions; (2) localized oscillatory components in the time-domain region have been used to evaluate the interplay between GRE and CO₂ emission in the frequency domain, overcoming the limitations of the fundamental time-series analysis; (3) the mediation role of economic growth, financial globalization and FUE in affecting the GRE-CO₂ relationship is empirically explored in the study.

This paper aims to explore current trends in how companies disclose climate-related risks and opportunities in their financial statements. As part of the authors’ analysis, they examine: whether forward-looking assumptions and judgements are typically considered in reporting climate-related risks/opportunities; whether there are differences in the reporting practices of firms in carbon-intensive industries versus non-carbon-intensive industries; and whether negative media reports have an influence on the levels of disclosure a firm makes.

The authors chose content analysis as their methodology and examined the financial statements published by firms listed on the UK’s FTSE 100 between 2016 and 2020. This analysis is framed by Suchman’s three dimensions of legitimacy, being pragmatic, cognitive and moral.

Climate-related disclosures in the notes and financial accounts of these firms did increase over the period. Yet, overall, the level the disclosures was inadequate and the quality was inconsistent. From this, the authors conclude that pragmatic legitimacy is not a particularly strong driving factor in compelling organisations to disclose climate-related information. The firms in carbon-intensive industries do provide greater levels of disclosure, including both qualitative and quantitative (monetary) content, which is consistent with cognitive legitimacy. However, from a moral legitimacy perspective, this study finds that firms did not adapt responsively to negative media coverage as a way of reflecting their accountability to broader public norms and values. Overall, this analysis suggests that regulatory enforcement and a systematic reporting framework with adequate guidance is going to be critical to developing transparent climate-related reporting in future.

This paper contributes to existing studies on climate-related disclosures, which have mainly examined the ‘front-half’ of annual reports. Conversely, this study aims to shed light on these practices in the “back-half” of these reports, exploring the underlying reasons for reporting climate-related risks and opportunities in financial accounts. The authors’ insights into the current disclosure practices make a theoretical contribution to the literature. Practitioners can also draw on these insights to improve how they report on climate-related risks and opportunities in their financial statements.

While science has researched the impact of air pollution on human health, the economic dimension of it has been less researched so far. Renewable energy consumption is an important factor in determining the level of life expectancy and reducing health expenditure. Thus, this study aims to investigate the impact of renewable energy, carbon emissions, health expenditure and urbanization on life expectancy in G-7 countries over the period of 2000–2019.

This study has adopted a novel Method of Moments Quantile Regression (MMQR). Furthermore, as a robustness check for MMQR, the fully modified ordinary least square, dynamic ordinary least squares and fixed effect ordinary least square estimators have been used.

The results indicated that renewable energy consumption, health expenditure and urbanization lead to an increase in life expectancy across all quantiles (5th to 95th), whereas higher carbon dioxide emissions reduce life expectancy at birth across all the quantiles (5th to 95th).

The empirical findings conclude that governments should recognize their potential in renewable energy sources and devise policies such as tax-related regulations, or relevant incentives to encourage further investments in this field.

This paper in comparison to the other research studies used MMQR to investigate the impact of factors affecting life expectancy. Also, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, so far no study has investigated the impact of renewable energy on life expectancy in G-7 countries.

This study aims to shed light on the experience of the United Arab Emirates (UAE) in balancing three main pillars: the environmental criteria, the reduction of CO₂ emissions and the economic growth. Based on the environmental Kuznets curve (EKC) framework, it will assess the causal relationship between economic indicators such as gross domestic product (GDP) per capita, trade openness and energy use and environmental indicators such as CO₂ emissions.

The analysis relies on a period of 40 years (1981–2020) where data is extracted from the World Bank database. This study uses the unit root test for time series stationarity, the optimal lag length test, the “Johansen” test for co-integration and the vector error correction model.

The paper concludes to two major findings. On a short-term basis, CO₂ emissions and economic indicators are negatively correlated, whereas on a long-term basis, there is no association between CO₂ emissions and economic indicators in the UAE.

The research ends with important recommendations. It illustrates the importance of rationalizing the use of primary resources and the necessity to embrace successful and efficient policies in the energy production.

More specifically, UAE is urged to address the problem of CO₂ emissions in the electricity sector and increase awareness of the use of environmentally friendly processes in the transport and industrial sectors. While setting their economic agendas, UAE are encouraged to meet environmental criteria and invest in renewable energy projects such as “Shams 1”, the largest solar power plant outside of Spain and the USA.

The current study is significant in its research on the environmental impact of economic development, trade openness and energy use policies in the UAE. It uses CO₂ emissions as an environmental proxy and evaluates the environmental policies adopted in the UAE to reduce its impact.

This study examines the effect of digital financial inclusion (DFI) on climate change in African countries, taking into account the moderating effect of income inequality.

This study employs panel data from 53 African countries between 2004 and 2021 and utilises the random-effects model and two-step generalised method of moments (GMM) to estimate the relationships amongst DFI, income inequality, CO2 emissions and renewable energy consumption (REC).

Our findings reveal that increased accessibility to automated teller machines (ATMs) leads to a reduction in CO2 emissions and an increase in REC. However, the effect of ATMs on CO2 emissions is stronger for individuals with lower incomes, whereas REC is higher for those with higher incomes. Additionally, mobile cellular subscriptions (MCS) increase both CO2 emissions and REC; however, when income inequality is considered, it results in a reduction in CO2 emissions and an increase in REC. Furthermore, Internet usage reduces CO2 emissions and increases REC in Africa, with income inequality levels further improving its contribution.

ATM accessibility and energy efficiency are means to mitigate carbon dioxide emissions and encourage the adoption of renewable energy sources.

This study is one of the first to explore the effects of income inequality on DFI, CO2 emissions and REC, highlighting its importance in Africa and its potential impact on environmental sustainability.

This study aims to investigate environmental efficiency based on energy change by using energy-related or nonenergy-related variables by reckoning with months and years as decision-making units (DMUs) for a hospital under radial and nonradial models.

The non-oriented slack-based measures (SBM)-data envelopment analysis (DEA) model considering desirable and undesirable outputs has been embraced in this study, where its obtained results were compared with the results of other DEA models are output-oriented SBM-DEA and Banker, Charnes, & Cooper-DEA. For this purpose, this research has used a data set covering the 2012–2018 period for a reference hospital, which includes energy-related and nonenergy-related variables.

The results demonstrate that environmental efficiency based on energy reached the highest level in the winter months, whereas the summer months have the lowest efficiency values arising from the increasing electricity consumption due to high cooling needs. According to results of the non-oriented SBM model, the month with the highest efficiency in all periods is January with a 0.936 average efficiency score, the lowest month is August with a 0.406 value.

This paper differs from other studies related to energy and environmental efficiencies in the literature with some aspects. First, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is the first one that takes into account time periods (months and years) as (DMUs for a single organization. Second, this study investigates environmental nonefficiencies, which are derived from energy uses and factors affecting energy use.