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 Glasgow COP26's climate pledges, said Jane Huang, head of TDCC's ESG team.

On Thursday (Nov. 11), the organization was once again invited to talk about its well-received ESG Dashboard at a professional forum abroad, and this time, by leading ESG-focused U.K. publisher Responsible Investor. TDCC and Cathay Financial Holding Co. took part in the discussions on behalf of Taiwan. The forum came after the Glasgow Climate Change Conference, which asked the world to avert climate disaster by capping global warming at 1.5 degrees Celsius above the pre-industrial level and by implementing plans or rules to cut emissions to net zero 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. This momentum can no longer be ignored by corporate boards and management teams of locally listed companies, resulting in the overall improvement of their ESG risk management scores by 10% on average, as shown by Sustainalytics statistics. However, the study points to another potential issue in the existing database.

"Half of the publicly listed companies fail to report their carbon emissions, unfortunately, and we are planning to include the carbon data, 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," Huang said.

“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,” she added.

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 Southeast Asian and Asia Pacific countries talked about the region’s sustainability transition and the risks without embracing ESG.

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.

“On corporate issuers’ ESG journey, TDCC provides the ESG ratings reports to give them methodologies, indicators, weightings, and everything they need to know in detail to help them improve their ESG performance,” said Huang.