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The authors examine the effect of greenhouse gas (ghg) assurance on cost of debt, and the effect of board gender diversity on cost of debt, for an international sample of listed companies.

Utilizing firm-level data and a quantile regression approach, this study examines the effects of greenhouse gas assurance and board diversity on cost of debt by employing an international sample of firms during 2015–2021.

The authors find that in firms with a relatively low cost of debt the external assurance of greenhouse gas emissions and gender diversity could significantly contribute to a reduction of cost of debt. Furthermore, other measures of board diversity that are linked with independent directors and skilled directors seem to contribute to an increase of firms' cost of debt in the lower end of distribution. Drawing from the agency theory, the authors showcase the fact that ghg assurance reduces information asymmetry and therefore agency costs such as borrowing costs and signals to the stakeholders a long-term commitment to excellence.

This study is the first that provides insights on the relationship between ghg assurance, board diversity and cost of debt.

Global climate change has become a major societal issue providing the impetus for governments to legislate policy in order to manage and mitigate greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. To assess whether the use of biomass can reduce GHG emissions requires accounting, reporting and assurance methods and procedures. The purpose of this paper is to illustrate key challenges of GHG reporting and assurance with the example of the Australian framework.

This viewpoint, discussing GHG emissions reporting and assurance, critically analyses some of the key issues arising in practice, including the current state of organizations' systems and controls, the changing nature of governance structures as well as measurement challenges being experienced by companies regarding GHG reporting.

The paper finds that more rigorous governance frameworks and management systems are likely to evolve around GHG reporting given the recent introduction of the carbon pricing mechanism and its nexus to companies' financial performance as well as increased risks associated with inaccurate reporting.

The paper contains an overview of the current regulatory environment and key issues surrounding GHG reporting and assurance.

The management of GHG‐related issues has significant implications for organisations. The paper provides both practitioner and academic perspectives on the current issues and challenges within the GHG reporting context.

This paper aims to examine whether an expectation gap exists between different stakeholders (i.e. emissions preparers, emissions assurers and shareholders) in relation to the assurance of greenhouse gas emissions. Further, the paper seeks to explore whether stakeholder expectations are influenced by the uncertainties inherent in the assurance engagement for different industry sectors (i.e. greenhouse gas emitter or greenhouse gas user entities).

An experimental survey was used to address the stated aims. Three stakeholder groups: shareholders, greenhouse gas emissions preparers and assurers, completed a survey based on the greenhouse gas emissions assurance for either an emitter or user entity.

The results provide support for the existence of an expectation gap in the emission assurance setting. Fundamental differences were identified between the stakeholder groups in relation to the responsibilities of the assurer and management; as well as the reliability and decision usefulness of the emissions statement. Moreover, the extent of the gap was found to differ between user entity engagements and emitter entity engagements.

The paper highlights the need for the assurance services profession and assurance standard setters to consider mechanisms to enhance the effectiveness of communicating the assurance function in this setting in order to enhance the credibility and social value of emissions assurance.

The paper is the first to examine the expectation gap in the greenhouse gas emissions assurance context. It thereby also contributes to the literature on the expectation gap in the assurance of non‐financial information. Moreover, the research findings provide standard setters with unique insights into areas to consider as they work toward the development of an international assurance standard for greenhouse gas emissions statements.

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.

Different livestock production systems contribute to globally Greenhouse gas emission (GHG) emission differently. The aim of this paper is to understand variation in emission in different production systems and it is also important for developing mitigation interventions that work for a specific production system.

In this study, the authors used the Global Livestock Environmental Assessment interactive model (GLEAM-i) to estimate the GHG emission and emission intensity and tested the effectiveness of mitigation strategies from 180 farms under three production systems in northern Ethiopia, namely, pastoral, mixed and urban production systems.

Production systems varied in terms of herd composition, livestock productivity, livestock reproductive parameters and manure management systems, which resulted in difference in total GHG emission. Methane (82.77%) was the largest contributor followed by carbon dioxide (13.40%) and nitrous oxide (3.83%). While both total carbon dioxide and methane were significantly higher (p < 0.05) in urban production system than the other systems emission intensities of cow’s milk and goat and sheep’s meat were lower in urban systems. Improvement in feed, manure management and herd parameters resulted in reduction of total GHG emission by 30, 29 and 21% in pastoral, mixed and urban production systems, respectively.

This study is a first time comparison of the GHG emission production by various production systems in northern Ethiopia. Moreover, it uses the GLEAM-i program for the first time in the ex ante settings for measuring and comparing emissions as well as for developing mitigation scenarios. By doing so, it provides information on the various livestock production system properties that contribute to the increase or decrease in GHG emission and helps in developing guidelines for low emission livestock production systems.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the evolution of greenhouse gas (GHG) reporting quality and to determine whether the evolution of reporting quality is linked with the type of information reported based on the “search”, “experience”, and “credence” typology.

The method is based on the content analysis of GHG reporting in 245 sustainability reports by 45 oil and gas companies between 1998 and 2010. The content analysis disclosure index developed links GHG reporting requirements with seven quality dimensions. The information associated with each item on the content analysis index is classified as “search”, “experience” or “credence”. Statistical analysis is used to determine whether any significant change occurred in either overall GHG reporting quality or in the quality of reporting in any of the individual dimensions of quality over the period of the study.

GHG reporting quality has not improved significantly between 1998 and 2010. The quality of reporting is not the same in each of the seven dimensions of quality and this can be explained by information typology.

This paper provides the first longitudinal analysis of the quality of GHG reporting. The methodology developed advances current measures of reporting quality by linking reporting requirements with particular quality dimensions. The results show that the type of information is important in terms of quality evolution and that this can dictate the measures required to improve quality.

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.

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.

This paper aims to explore the nature of voluntary greenhouse gas (GHG) disclosure by non-GHG-registered companies among industry sectors over a period after the introduction of the National Greenhouse and Energy Reporting (NGER) Act 2007 and before the introduction of the Australian ETS.

A GHG disclosure index is used to evaluate the levels of GHG disclosure in 2009 and 2011 annual reports.

This paper highlights that non-GHG-registered companies seem to improve their disclosure by incorporating more “behavioural management” actions rather than “symbolic” actions. The changing rationale of GHG disclosure is towards more serious GHG reduction strategies. Consistent with voluntary disclosure and signalling theories, companies having good news to tell disclose their superior GHG information to promote their superior environmental performance.

The findings should be useful for stakeholders who are interested in GHG disclosure strategies. Also, the content analysis of the annual reports provides some clarity in respect of the most common aspects of GHG disclosure by non-GHG-registered companies which is helpful in the evaluation of correspondence between carbon disclosure strategies and the objectives of carbon abatement.

Previous studies mostly investigate the differences in the type of GHG disclosure among companies subject to mandatory GHG regulations. However, this paper is the first study to examine the changing rationale in the nature of GHG disclosure of non-GHG-registered companies. While much of the prior research uses GHG-registered companies as the sample, no empirical study to date has considered non-GHG-registered companies that encompass 96 per cent of ASX listed companies.

Global warming is a process that takes place 11,500 years after the end of the last Ice Age. The main identified reason is the increased emissions of greenhouse gases (GHGs). Since the nineteenth century, GHG evolution has recorded a quantum leap from the previous linear development. Human is the main factor behind this evolution, through industrialization and the exponential increase of population. Based on these, the chapter’s primary goal was to highlight an original method of predicting the future evolution of GHG emissions in the domains of Energy (including Transportation), Industry Processes and Product Use, Agriculture, and Waste Management. The novelty of the research consisted of testing several variants of functions (power, exponential, inverse trigonometric) to identify, from a group of variants. This optimal function would generate those predictions, which are closest to the real values. The causes that create GHG emissions in each of the four domains were the foundation for the analysis. This chapter focuses on two main subjects: first, the identification of a smooth function to predict the evolution of GHG emissions, and second, the function’s use to estimate the projections of GHG emissions in the coming years for the four domains: Energy (including Transportation), Industry Processes and Product Use, Agriculture, and Waste Management. An observation was that the weights of these four domains remain relatively the same despite the reductions in the total GHG emissions.