Green Capital Expenditure Commitments and Subsequent Environmental Performance Outcomes: A Longitudinal Case Study of Baosteel
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.54097/84yxhj63Keywords:
Green capital expenditure, Environmental performance, Corporate environmental investment, Environmental disclosure, Longitudinal analysisAbstract
Green capital expenditure is often treated as the mechanism through which corporate environmental ambition becomes measurable environmental change, yet firm-level longitudinal evidence about what such spending is followed by remains thin, and it is thinnest where the exposure variable itself is rarely disclosed in numeric form. This study examines Baoshan Iron & Steel over the fiscal years 2018 to 2025 through a longitudinal single-case design built entirely from official annual and sustainability filings. The case was selected on documented grounds, because a prior screening of 48 firm-years drawn from a stratified sample of 80 Chinese A-share firms located only two qualifying forward numeric green capital expenditure disclosures, and both belonged to this firm. Three findings follow. The company does not report one continuous green capital expenditure measure but three successive and definitionally distinct ones, which limits the length of any series that can honestly be constructed. Conventional pollutants fell steeply across the window, with sulphur oxides lower by 66.0%, nitrogen oxides by 57.7%, particulates by 71.3% and chemical oxygen demand by 62.4%, while greenhouse-gas intensity fell by only 8.0% and energy intensity by 0.6%. Disclosed budgets and subsequently realised spending correspond closely, at realisation ratios of 117.4% in FY2024 and 93.3% in FY2025. Green capital expenditure is disclosed in only five years inside the window, so no coefficient reported here supports inference and no causal claim is made.
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