Corporate climate disclosure in China - with Erica Downs, Ned Downie, and Yushan Lou

Environment China

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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