From Active Disclosure To Implementation Of ESG Hot Push Enterprise Value

ESG has been mentioned repeatedly in the past year, and its heat has been significantly improved.

The so-called ESG, according to the definition of business road, is an investment concept focusing on the enterprise environment, society and governance performance. These are the three core factors that investors pay attention to when they invest to measure the sustainability and environmental and social impact of enterprises. This strategy is also called responsible investment. By issuing ESG reports regularly, enterprises can strengthen risk management, improve fund-raising ability, meet supply chain demand, enhance reputation, reduce costs and provide profit margin, encourage innovation, retain talents and obtain social recognition.

"The relationship between social responsibility and ESG used to be inclusive. Social responsibility is bigger than ESG. In the past, everyone agreed that ESG was facing investors, but this year, it was suddenly taken seriously because of corporate governance." On December 19, at the 17th China corporate citizen forum hosted by the 21st century economic report, Liu Tao, a partner of shangdaozong and general manager of Shanghai Branch, said when talking about how to do a good job in ESG (environment, society and corporate governance), the whole social responsibility and ESG are being separated, and social responsibility is becoming social impact and contribution report, while ESG is becoming corporate governance and environment And social action performance.

The core is implementation

As an indicator of disclosure, ESG once became an important ranking between industries and enterprises, but at the same time, how to implement the commitment is still the core issue at present.

According to Zhang Li, Professor of ecology and doctoral supervisor of Beijing Normal University, director and Secretary General of Alxa see foundation, we must implement the so-called ranking or rating, and use commercial means to promote enterprises to truly realize environmental optimization and carbon dioxide emission reduction. This is a very real work to be done at present.

Take the "real estate green supply chain project" initiated by see as an example, at present, there are 100 real estate entrepreneurs in Alashan see, involving about 20% of the scale of China's real estate industry. "Real estate green supply chain action" was launched in 2016, and there were 3800 white list enterprises by last year. The so-called white list meets the environmental compliance requirements formulated by the action committee of the real estate green supply chain, and the products can be purchased by 100 real estate enterprises.

"We propose the" real estate green supply chain project ", in fact, we hope to enable upstream suppliers to achieve pollutant emission reduction and carbon emission reduction, and achieve carbon emission reduction goals through procurement. This is a business model, which is not green and does not purchase." Zhang Li pointed out.

Wu Juncai, vice president and General Secretary General of Danone Greater China, also agreed: "because the implementation of low carbon is a very large project. The ability of an enterprise is limited. It is necessary to pull employees, suppliers, distributors and industry associations together to promote the low-carbon action, and then quantify, conduct internal audit, and invite external authorities to evaluate. "

"In the future, ESG related indicators should be included in enterprise performance. After the national policy and direction of carbon dioxide emission reduction has been determined, it is necessary to further strengthen the intensity of carbon dioxide emission reduction and specific indicators of emission reduction Zhang Li analyzed that at present, the industry still stays at the level of enterprise independent emission reduction, such as the green list proposed by the green supply chain of real estate, and the emission reduction indicators are directly written into the procurement requirements, and priority procurement is made.

Therefore, enterprises should take a longer-term view in ESG. "Our long-term business goals are consistent with ESG. The post-90s will be 40 years old in 10 years, 30 years after 00 years old, and 20 years old after 10 years. In 2030, they will be the mainstream consumers, investors and employees. Their awareness of the environment is completely different. What we want to satisfy is not only the present consumers, but also the future consumers. " According to Wu Juncai, Danone Group has also experienced 15-30 years and reached the peak of carbon emission last year. It hopes to achieve zero emission in the world by 2050, and China's first factory will reach zero emission in 2022 ahead of schedule.

On the standard of investigation

Wang Xiaoguang, President of Beijing Rongzhi Corporate Social Responsibility Research Institute, said that ESG is relatively hot now because of financial openness. International rating agencies have selected the best listed companies in China into their evaluation index to evaluate these companies. These evaluations have an impact on the upstream and downstream companies in the industrial chain and the judgment of investors.

However, the first problem is that because ESG concept comes from the west, there are great differences between investment standards and China's national conditions, such as the standard definition and index weight of relevant projects. Through the practice in recent years, the rating agencies evaluate the industry standards, information disclosure, regulatory requirements and other aspects according to China's national conditions, and make indicators adjustment, so as to truly reflect the enterprise's ESG risk, performance and impact on the value of listed companies through rating results.

"With the entry of international capital into the Chinese market, rating agencies will be more involved in the process of standard setting and information exchange, and explore the development path of ESG in line with China's social responsibility value. It can be predicted that in the future, ESG rating standards will reflect more Chinese characteristics. " Wang Xiaoguang said.

In fact, the three dimensions of ESG itself: environment, society and corporate governance determine the main objects of concern. Traditional industries with great impact on the environment, such as heavy chemical industry, energy industry and mining industry, have stronger power for ESG environmental work due to external pressure in pollution control, clean energy and economic transformation.

The financial industry, on the other hand, has a better performance in financial stability, social participation, corporate governance and other aspects, but has less Disclosure Measures in the environment. For example, in some non-traditional areas, the impact on the environment is small and there is not enough external pressure, so the investment in ESG is relatively small, which also affects the ESG evaluation results of enterprises to a certain extent.

Liu Tao's suggestion on how to do ESG well in the future is to dare to promise. "Enterprises can be bolder and more confident. The outside world will pay for your vision and for you to become a better enterprise. The capital market and consumers will also help you do this. Countries have made commitments, and enterprises can also make their own commitments to obtain greater growth space. "