TAIPEI (Taiwan News) — The Taiwan Depository and Clearing Corporation (TDCC) is looking at the possibility of adding emissions data to its expert-curated environmental, social, and governance (ESG) dashboard to align with COP26's climate pledges, said Jane Huang, head of the TDCC's ESG team.
The organization was recently invited by ESG-focused U.K. publisher Responsible Investor to a professional forum to talk about its well-received ESG Dashboard. The forum took place right after the Glasgow Climate Change Conference, where the world was asked to avert climate disaster by capping global warming at 1.5 degrees Celsius above the pre-industrial level and by implementing plans to reach net zero emissions by 2050.
As the notion of sustainable investment gains support, there is a rising public demand for ESG reporting, which makes TDCC's Investor Relations (IR) Platform even more popular. Huang indicated this momentum can no longer be ignored by corporate boards and management teams of locally listed companies, resulting in their overall ESG risk management scores improving by 10% on average, as shown by Sustainalytics statistics.
However, the study points to another potential issue in the existing database, she said. "Half of the publicly listed companies fail to report their carbon emissions, unfortunately, and we are planning to include the EU Sustainable Finance Disclosure Regulation's (SFDR) principal adverse impacts (PAI) regime in the dashboard to better serve users and to help Taiwan stand on top of the trend."
“It is a critical moment for Taiwan’s sustainable economic transition when institutions and companies are talking about ambitious climate actions such as cutting emissions. Board directors and management teams of locally listed companies are being prompted to pay increasing attention to their environmental and social impact," Huang commented.
The forum was part of the four-day virtual event hosted by Responsible Investors, which specializes in ESG and sustainable finance.
Institutional investors, regulators, business leaders, and other finance professionals in Asia Pacific countries talked about the region’s sustainability transition and the risks of not embracing ESG. Taiwan's Cathay Financial Holding Co. also took part in the discussions, sharing its insight on ESG practices in the country.
TDCC’s free-to-use IR platform, which is open to the public, includes ESG ratings for locally listed companies by top global rating agencies like FTSE Russell, ISS ESG, MSCI, and Sustainalytics. It has been dubbed Taiwan’s "ESG Dashboard" by finance professionals and investors.
The platform offers corporate issuers' methodologies, indicators, weightings, and everything else companies need to know in detail to improve their ESG performance.
