ESG-rapportering: En undersøgelse af pålideligheden og sammenligneligheden i virksomheders esg-rapportering og fremtidige påvirkninger heraf

Abstract

Environmental, social and governance (ESG) reporting represents how companies can measure the sustainability of their company in the three categories concerning for example CO2 output, waste, energy consumption, diversity in the workforce and CEO pay ratio. ESG-reporting has slowly gained more power in investments decisions which makes the need for a reliable and comparable reporting crucial. Currently, there is no mandatory framework for companies to follow which makes a huge challenge for the quality of the reporting that is not aligned with the level of quality in the traditional financial reporting. Literature and research show that reliability and comparability are the main aspects that challenge the quality of ESG-reporting. The combat these challenges a new directive from the EU Commission will be implemented with expected effect from 2024. Until then, these current challenges remain, and doubts may prevail regarding if the new ESRS-standards will solve the current challenges.
This paper examines how 9 large listed Danish companies in the biotech and pharmaceutical industry report on ESG by analyzing their ESG-reporting of 2021/22. This is done through a case study together with an interview with an expert within ESG. The analysis shows meaningful differences in the analyzed companies’ reporting which makes the reporting hard to compare between companies. Furthermore, the reliability is challenged partly because of big variations of what is included in the reporting. A closer look on the impact of the coming CSRD-directive show that some of the identified challenges may be solved by the new standards, but there will remain several challenges that have yet to be resolved. Companies can improve the quality by being more open about methods and accounting principles and an implementation of a common tool to handle ESG data will be a positive contribution to improve the quality. Companies succeeding with a high quality of ESG-reporting is crucial for the world’s increasing attention of ESG especially taking the investment discissions into account.