ESG Disclosure in China’s Thermal Power Industry: Status, Challenges, and Analysis of Listed Companies

DOI

10.2991/978-94-6239-801-6_77How to use a DOI?

Keywords

ESG Disclosure; Thermal Power Industry; Dual Carbon Goals; Content Analysis; Chinese Listed Companies

Abstract

Against the backdrop of tightening global ESG regulations, the deepening of China’s “dual carbon” goals, and the green development requirements of the 15th Five-Year Plan, the thermal power industry—as a key sector for carbon emissions—relies on high-quality ESG disclosure as an important lever for balancing energy security with low-carbon transition. This research takes the ESG and annual reports of 24 non-ST A-share listed thermal power enterprises in 2024 as the key samples for analysis and then systematically examines the current situation of ESG disclosure and the structural bottlenecks in the domestic thermal power industry by means of the combination of content analysis and descriptive statistics. This study discovers that there are deficiencies in the core aspects within this industry, including inconsistent disclosure standards, complicated preparation bases, extremely low third - party certification rates, insufficient substantial disclosure in the environmental dimension, and unbalanced disclosure among various dimensions. Based on these results, this study puts forward a series of targeted optimization strategies, for example, improving the mandatory information disclosure system, formulating specific disclosure regulations for the thermal power industry, strengthening comprehensive certification, and so on. By doing so, a powerful and evidence-based reference is provided, which is used to enhance the quality of environmental, social, and governance information disclosure and to enable the sustainable development of China’s thermal power industry.

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  - Tingrui Yang
PY  - 2026
DA  - 2026/10/23
TI  - ESG Disclosure in China’s Thermal Power Industry: Status, Challenges, and Analysis of Listed Companies
BT  - Proceedings of the 2026 2nd International Conference on Financial Innovation and Marketing Management (FIMM 2026)
PB  - Atlantis Press
SP  - 730
EP  - 746
SN  - 2352-5428
UR  - https://doi.org/10.2991/978-94-6239-801-6_77
DO  - 10.2991/978-94-6239-801-6_77
ID  - Yang2026
ER  -