Structural Contingency of ESG Value: Comparing Green Transformation and Market Response in China’s Petrochemical Giants

DOI

10.2991/978-94-6239-801-6_80How to use a DOI?

Keywords

ESG; Green Transformation; Structural Contingency; Chinese National Oil Companies; Firm Valuation

Abstract

With the worldwide energy transition and China’s dual carbon approach, ESG plays a critical role in determining long-term competitiveness and market value of traditional firms. In comparison with PetroChina and Sinopec, this paper has observed that ESG-driven change can help build strategic legitimacy, facilitate organisational progress, and enhance the basis of firm value reassessment for China’s high-carbon industry. However, the contribution of ESG in creating value is not necessarily constant, but still structurally independent. Factors such as high transition costs, uncertain short-term returns, divergent business models, and low market recognition severely reduce its impact. Comparing other firms, this paper demonstrates that PetroChina and Sinopec adopt different transformations due to upstream and downstream positions, financial backgrounds, and priorities. This paper proposes 3 suggestions in order to increase the efficiency and measurability of green investment, design transformation plans tailored for industrial structure, and improve ESG disclosure and investor communication quality. This paper introduces this work by hypothesising the structural aspect of ESG valuation and providing practical advice for setting context-sensitive transition strategies in carbon-intensive industries.

Copyright

© 2026 The Author(s)

Open Access

Open Access This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), which permits any noncommercial use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made.

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TY  - CONF
AU  - Jinglong Tian
PY  - 2026
DA  - 2026/10/23
TI  - Structural Contingency of ESG Value: Comparing Green Transformation and Market Response in China’s Petrochemical Giants
BT  - Proceedings of the 2026 2nd International Conference on Financial Innovation and Marketing Management (FIMM 2026)
PB  - Atlantis Press
SP  - 766
EP  - 777
SN  - 2352-5428
UR  - https://doi.org/10.2991/978-94-6239-801-6_80
DO  - 10.2991/978-94-6239-801-6_80
ID  - Tian2026
ER  -