Assessing the carbon emission changing for sustainability and high-quality economic development

Eco-efficiency is usually considered the gold rule for managerial decision making in an environmental context because it seemingly integrates the efficient use of corporate economic assets and the efficient use of environmental resources. We challenge this view by decompose Eco-efficiency to provide an in-depth analysis of corporate carbon emission efficiency changing and to identify the drivers of an efficient use of carbon emission resources whether in a sustainability mode or not. By building on the value-based approach in financial management, we extend the rationale of our method to develop drivers for the efficient use of carbon emissions. We apply this method to analyze the carbon emission efficiency changing of Mainland Chinese companies listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange (HKSE) to obtain a better understanding of the corporate carbon emission efficiency changing from the perspective sustainability. The study finds that about 15% of enterprises achieved sustainability paradigm from 2018 to 2019. In the firms with strong carbon efficiency and weak carbon efficiency, the growth of economic benefit index is much higher than that of environmental performance index, further more, economically superior carbon efficient enterprises (High-quality economic development) are more common than environmentally superior carbon efficient enterprises (High-quality environment development). In addition, the carbon efficiency levels between different industries are also quite different, with information technology industry become optimal and achieve strong carbon efficiency development of the largest number of enterprises. (C) 2021 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Automated summary

The study provides an in-depth analysis of corporate carbon emission efficiency, revealing that approximately 15% of enterprises achieved sustainability paradigm from 2018 to 2019. It also shows that economically superior carbon efficient enterprises are more common than environmentally superior ones. There are significant differences in carbon efficiency levels across different industries, with the information technology industry having the largest number of enterprises achieving strong carbon efficiency development.