Vlad-Cosmin Bulai

This paper focuses on the oil and gas sector because of its direct exposure to the complete range of ESG challenges, as well as strong pressure to change business models due to the energy transition. We investigate the ESG scores of a sample of global companies in this sector and their relationship to stock market performance and to the ESG intensity of corporate reports. As an original contribution, we incorporate the intensity of corporate discourse on technology-related sustainability topics for the first time in the literature. Our findings reveal that investors examine both sustainability discourse and results when determining a company’s value and validate the role of ESG scores and rankings in providing investors with an accurate and meaningful assessment of companies’ sustainability actions. Moreover, companies’ disclosure of their sustainable actions and technological developments related to sustainability is positively related to stock returns. This implies that a focus on sustainable practices and constant communication with investors might result in higher market performance. Furthermore, encouraging companies, particularly those in sectors and industries sensitive to ESG factors, to invest in ESG initiatives, is accompanied by improved performance, which makes them more attractive and better positioned to attract financing.

The latest European Union measures for combating climate adopted in the “Fit for 55 package” envisage the extension of the Emissions Trading System, the first “cap-and-trade” system in the world created for achieving climate targets, which limits the amount of greenhouse gas emissions by imposing a price on carbon. In this context, our study provides an integrated assessment of carbon price risk exposure of all economic sectors in the European Union Member States, thus supporting decision making in determining the energy transition risk. We propose a novel approach in assessing carbon risk exposure using the Value at Risk methodology to compute the carbon price under the EU ETS, based on historical price simulation for January–August 2021 and ARMA-GARCH models for the October 2012–August 2021 period. We further built a value erosion metric, which allowed us to establish each sector’s exposure to risk and to identify differences between Eastern and Western EU countries. We find that the refining sector appears to be highly vulnerable, whereas there is higher potential for large losses in the energy supply and chemical sectors in Eastern EU Member States, given a different pace of industry restructuring.