Climate change reporting: What do we know about its determinants and capital market consequences (2025)

ICAS publishes research into climate change reporting, its causes and consequences.

Over the last twenty years, there’s been a significant increase globally in the number and type of sustainability reporting frameworks, covering topics such as climate change, emissions, pollution, water management and governance. This means organisations face increasing pressure from multiple stakeholders to act around mitigating the effects of climate change, supporting the transition to net zero and reporting on them. It’s become clear that climate change reporting will continue to gain more prominence in the coming years.

In the UK, the government is working to establish the UK’s first Sustainability Reporting Standards (UK SRS) by assessing the suitability for UK endorsement of the two new standards issued by the International Sustainability Standards Board (ISSB). This work aims to improve transparency and comparability in corporate sustainability disclosures, to help investors make informed decisions. 

Internationally, the adoption of the ISSB’s standards, is gaining momentum, providing a unified framework for climate-related reporting, with more standards on other topics on the way.

Various stakeholder groups and investors want more reliable and relevant climate change reporting and accurate reporting is therefore becoming increasingly important. As a result, it is relevant to explore recent evidence on the key drivers of related reporting quality.

Research aims and findings 

To further investigate, ICAS has published a new report produced by Dr Diogenis Baboukardos, Audencia Business School & Athens University of Economics and Business, Dr Evangelos Seretis and Dr Ioannis Tsalavoutas, both from the University of Glasgow.

This research aims to:

• Uncover companies’ climate change reporting practices and the drivers of these.
• Explore the capital market consequences of climate change reporting practices.
• Discuss how members can develop best practices in climate change reporting.

The main findings from this project have been outlined in a key takeaways document, and you can read more details in the full report.

Read the full report