Influence of Greenhouse Gas Emissions on Russian Firm Performance

Climate risks lead not only to changes in legislation, but also create a threat to reputation and reduce investor interest in companies with high carbon footprints. It is not enough for business to be profitable and highly dividend, its environmental responsibility plays an increasingly important role in assessing investment attractiveness. The work is devoted to the study of such questions as what effect the reduction of greenhouse gas emission has on the firm performance, whether voluntary disclosure of information on emissions affects the market firm performance. Based on the data of 76 largest Russian companies, of which only 33 publish greenhouse gas emissions in 2015-2018 years, it is shown that a decrease in greenhouse gas emissions (Scope 1) by Russian companies leads to an increase in such indicators as the Q-Tobin’s coefficient, return on equity and return on assets. Moreover, Russian companies that minimize exposure to the risk of global warming, maximize new profit opportunities, achieve higher return on assets. This paper also proves that publishing emission information in annual reports or sustainability reports increases the market firm performance in dirty industries. In addition, despite the fact that only 22% of Russian companies publish greenhouse gas emissions in the international environmental project Carbon Disclosure Project (foreign companies - 44%), the fact of publishing information on emissions in this project does not affect their performance. This study is unique in view of the fact that an assessment of the effect of greenhouse gas emission on the Russian firm performance has not been conducted.