Analysis of factors influencing the level of environmental risks of ferrous metallurgy companies

Abstract

Environmental safety is one of the Russian metallurgical companies’ leadership key requirements in the world market, in which the environmental friendliness of goods and services production is one of the important competitive advantages. The study aimed to develop methodological approaches to assessing the environmental risks of the largest Russian ferrous metallurgy companies based on public data. The approach proposed by the authors includes the substantiation of an algorithm for assessing environmental risks from identifying factors that have a significant impact on the level of environmental risks of ferrous metallurgy companies, the choice of indicators - indicators and a scale for their assessment to the formation of a consolidated rating of companies and its interpretation. The methodological basis of the study was the regulatory documents on environmental safety; sustainable development standards in the field of ecology; rating agencies’ data and information; metallurgical companies’ information from the Internet resources, their financial, environmental and annual reports; analytical reviews, works of foreign and Russian scientists on environmental issues; security, monitoring data conducted by the Russian Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs. In assessing environmental risks, data from 9 ferrous metallurgy companies included in the Forbs rating of the largest private companies in Russia were used: PJSC “NLMK”, PJSC “Severstal”, PJSC “MMK”, “EVRAZ” Group, PJSC “Mechel”, “Metalloinvest” Group, “OMK” Group, PJSC “TMK”, PJSC “ChTPZ”. This article includes the results of the first stage of the study, which consists in identifying the characteristics of the compared companies that affect the level of environmental risks, which include: the organizational structure of the business (scale, geography of activities, structure of holdings), financial condition (availability of financial resources, their directions investments, primarily investments in the reconstruction of production facilities), as well as the availability of information to assess the company’s impact on the environment. The article was prepared in the framework of the grant in the priority areas of research FSBEI HE Plekhanov Russian University of Economics on the topic “Monitoring of sectoral financial security risks in the digital environment using the Harvard paradigm of industry analysis”.