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The purpose of this paper is to investigate the factors driving greenhouse gas reporting by Chinese companies.

Content analysis of annual reports and corporate social responsibility (CSR) reports for the year 2010 of the top 100 A‐share companies listed on Shanghai Stock Exchange was conducted to investigate the extent of greenhouse gas reporting. Multiple regression analysis was performed to determine the factors driving these companies' greenhouse gas reporting.

It was found that most Chinese companies reported neutral and good news. The results also indicate larger companies operating in an industry which has higher level of carbon dioxide emissions tend to have higher levels of greenhouse gas disclosures, consistent with the expectation of legitimacy theory. However, profitability and overseas listing were not significantly related to greenhouse gas reporting. This is consistent with the findings of previous literature. Finally, contrary to expectations, state‐owned companies report less greenhouse gas information than private companies.

The paper contributes towards theory development by testing legitimacy theory in the context of greenhouse gas reporting by Chinese companies and contributes to existing literature on greenhouse gas reporting by focussing on the large emerging economy of China. The practical contribution of the paper rests in the area of accounting practice. The results outline the dearth in greenhouse gas reporting by Chinese companies, suggesting there needs to be future development of accounting standards in this area.

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.

The purpose of this paper is to raise a selection of issues and questions that have begun to face academics and business professionals in the technically complex field of greenhouse gas accounting.

This paper drew on accounting, audit and assurance‐based field work whilst the author was employed with a “Big 4” accounting firm and undertaken with a range of Australian companies preparing to report greenhouse gas emissions to the Australian Government for the first time during June‐October 2009. The issues discussed in this paper include: determination of organisational boundaries and ownership of greenhouse emissions; determination of operational boundaries and how to account for the greenhouse emissions of contractors; and challenges of measuring and accounting for greenhouse gas emissions in the underground coal mining industry.

This paper highlights the need for further research into greenhouse gas accounting methodologies.

The paper is primarily a news piece with a focus on three of a possible multitude of issues. The intention is not to provide a complete review of the growing academic literature in the greenhouse gas accounting field, nor to elaborate on the entire array of challenges presented by greenhouse gas accounting for a range of industries. Further, the paper does not intend to discuss climate change science or emissions trading in any detail.

Whilst the focus is on the Australian experience, the questions raised may be of interest to a more international audience as attempts are made to put a national framework using local measures on a global problem are commonplace.

This paper aims to identify the significance of carbon emissions reporting for investment banking.

Functionaries at selected financial institutions in the USA, Europe and Australia are interviewed. Carbon emissions reporting methods used by companies are identified using desk research. A proposal from a non‐state actor called the Climate Disclosure Standards Board for general‐purpose carbon emissions reporting is assessed using participant observation. The data gathered are interpreted through a semiotic lens, with focus on the placement, content, and style of reporting, and combining with a functional perspective of decision‐usefulness.

Environmental investing for well‐diversified investors constitutes a discourse of the imaginary. Financialised constructs have been used to represent heavier polluters as superior “carbon performers” (the imaginary), while reported variations in industrial carbon emissions levels have been ignored in asset allocation decisions (the actual). Environmental investing is conditioned by four factors: exclusion of carbon emissions in constructions of firm value; diverse methods used by firms to calculate, measure and report carbon emissions; the appropriate venue for such reporting; and the quantum of data contained therein. Carbon emissions reports have had some use in investors' assessments of firms' corporate governance.

Risk assessment is likely to be erroneous if using measures that deflate carbon emissions by firms' revenues. This may not matter much as carbon reporting in the hands of investors appears linked to imaginary signification more so than actual portfolio decisions.

The paper contributes to work on the participation of institutional investors in environmental investing and establishes a foundation for future research in general‐purpose reporting on greenhouse gas emissions. Supplemented by desk research, the study uses interviews to provide insights into investors' motivations for environmental investing, and how they use company‐issued carbon reports.

This paper aimed to explore the submissions made to the National Greenhouse and Energy Reporting (NGER) policy paper by corporations and other stakeholders. It also sought to establish whether broader climate change issues were addressed in the context of the submissions.

The agenda‐setting framework was utilised to provide the theoretical perspective for the study. This research applied a combination of concept analysis and mapping, and content analysis, of the submissions using the Leximancer software tool.

The study found a divergence in the responses of corporations and other stakeholders, with the former focusing primarily on the NGER policy paper, while the latter presented significant concerns over carbon pollution and climate change, an issue that was not the primary concern of the policy paper. Moreover, corporations also acknowledged the close link between the NGER process and a future emissions trading scheme, and expressed concerns over the development of a mechanism that would put a price on carbon.

The paper contributes to the limited literature on carbon accounting and reporting in relation to both the local and international context. Moreover, an agenda‐setting perspective provided a suitable lens for understanding the NGER submissions process and its role within the broader climate change policy area in Australia.

Policies are influenced by key players and their familiarity with these policies could lead to successful implementation. The establishment of the NGER legislation was deemed successful, despite concerns raised in the submissions. This was because the policy used corporate reporting as a means of assessing accountability for carbon emissions. This finding has implications for other nations seeking to develop mandatory carbon reporting.

The paper has built further explanatory potential of the agenda‐setting framework, provides direct evidence in relation to stakeholder submissions to prospective environmental legislation, and adds to the use of combination methods that can be utilised for effectively analysing stakeholder submissions on major policy questions and issues.

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.

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.

The paper is an excerpt from a more comprehensive study by the Florida Department of Environmental Protection comparing the technical elements of offset projects in forestry, agriculture, and waste management, as well as some miscellaneous project types. The authors compare and contrast design elements of three specific offset projects: afforestation/reforestation, manure management, and landfill gas capture. The technical review for each offset project is concluded with a look at the potential applicability for that project in Florida in the context of the protocols evaluated.

Offset projects that may be employed in Florida are first broken up into comparable design elements specific to the selected offset project type. Focusing on the design elements, a discussion of the similarities and differences among the protocols for each offset project is presented. Each section begins with general findings then moves on to assessments of the detailed design elements. Finally, the project's general applicability to Florida is considered, highlighting specific strengths of particular protocols from the analysis of the design elements.

Protocols tend to vary from highly specific requirements to a more general set of recommendations. Interestingly, no one program's set of protocols is the most opportunistic for Florida, but rather various protocols may have distinctive strengths depending on the project type.

Many comparative studies of offset protocols evaluate protocols in the context of program‐level policies. This study uniquely values the technical details in the protocols and does not consider policy or program‐level issues.

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.

Institutional governance theory is used to explain voluntary corporate greenhouse gas (GHG) reporting in the context of a market governance system in the absence of climate change public policy. This paper seeks to hypothesise that GHG reporting is related to internal organisation systems, external privately promulgated guidance and EU ETS trading.

A two‐stage approach is used. The initial model examines whether firms' GHG disclosures are associated with internal organisation systems factors: environmental management systems (EMS), corporate governance quality and environmental management committees as well as external private guidance provided by the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) and the Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP) for 187 ASX 300 firms. EU ETS trading is also included. Determinants of the extent and credibility of GHG disclosure is examined in the second stage where an index constructed from the GHG reporting standard “ISO 14064‐1” items for a sub‐sample of 80 disclosing firms as the dependent variable.

Firms that voluntarily disclose GHGs have EMSs (uncertified and certified), higher corporate governance quality and publicly report to the CDP, tend to be large and in the energy and mining and industrial sectors. The credibility and extent of disclosures are related to the existence of a certified EMS, public reporting to the CDP, and use of the GRI. Firms that disclose more credible information are more likely to be large and in the energy and mining, industrial and services sectors.

The paper shows that some proactive but pragmatic Australian firms are disclosing their GHGs voluntarily for competitive advantage in the current market governance system in the absence of public policy.