Feb 14 2024 33 mins 6
Today's episode looks at the complex topic of corporate climate disclosures. Our guests today are Erica Downs, Ned Downie, and Lou Yushan. They are the authors of a recent report, published by the Columbia Center on Global Energy Policy (CGEP), entitled “China’s Climate Disclosure Regime: How Regulations, Politics, and Investors Shape Corporate Climate Reporting.”
Erica Downs is senior research scholar at the Center on Global Energy Policy at Columbia University; Edmund Downie is PhD Candidate in Public Affairs at the Princeton School of Public and International Affairs; and Yushan Lou is Research Associate at the Center on Global Energy Policy at Columbia University.
In the podcast we discuss:
- How disclosures on ESG and carbon emissions differ in Hong Kong versus the mainland, and for listed versus unlisted firms
- The differing incentives SOEs have for making public climate disclosures
- The value of such disclosures for policy, given that policy-makers have so many other command-and-control instruments on climate policy and ways of obtaining emissions or climate-related information from the largest emitters
- The ways investors can and do influence Chinese firms, including SOEs, to improve climate disclosures
For further reading:
Edmund Downie, Erica Downs, Yushan Lou, “China’s Climate Disclosure Regime: How Regulations, Politics, and Investors Shape Corporate Climate Reporting," Columbia Center on Global Energy Policy, 29 November 2023, at https://www.energypolicy.columbia.edu/publications/chinas-climate-disclosure-regime-how-regulations-politics-and-investors-shape-corporate-climate-reporting/.
Edmund Downie, Erica Downs, Yushan Lou, "Better disclosure rules can help China’s financial markets work for the climate," China Dialogue, 4 January 2024, at https://chinadialogue.net/en/climate/better-disclosure-rules-can-help-chinas-financial-markets-work-for-the-climate/.
Episode produced by: Anders Hove
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