Transparent Carbon Disclosures: depth in Carbon-reporting of Dutch listed and non-listed companies

Abstract

Climate change is seen as one of the most relevant challenges for the next coming years, politically and economically. The Dutch government has set targets to reduce national carbon emissions according to the commitments made in Paris in 2015. Since companies substantially contribute to the level of carbon emissions, it is necessary to monitor their carbon emissions to see whether they fulfil their commitments. This research shows to what extent companies in the Netherlands (listed, non-listed family owned and a reference group we refer to as non-listed other companies) report their strategies, implementation and performance regarding carbon emissions and reduction. We find, not surprisingly, that on average listed companies are far more transparent than non-listed companies. Non-listed family owned companies are apparently not active or even not willing to be transparent about their carbon policy. However, we do find that several non-listed companies that score high in the Dutch Transparency Benchmark (non-listed other companies) are just as transparent about carbon emissions as AEX-listed companies that must report due to market regulation. Furthermore, we find that most carbon disclosures are still of a mainly qualitative nature. This could imply that firms’ carbon disclosures are at present mostly a means of storytelling rather than a means of thorough analysis on how climate change risk might affect them and how they have to respond to mitigate these financial and societal risks.