Greenhouse Gas Emissions and Expected Returns

Abstract

We examine how company-level greenhouse gas emissions have been related to company financials as well as the expected returns of the companies’ stocks and bonds from 2009 to 2018. Examining the US, developed ex US, and emerging markets, we do not find emission intensity, emission level, or change in emission level to provide additional information about future profitability beyond what is contained in current profitability. In addition, we do not detect a reliable empirical relation between these emission metrics and average stock returns. Similarly, our analysis of US corporate bonds finds no compelling empirical evidence linking the issuers’ emission metrics to average bond returns. While a growing demand for investing in securities of companies with lower emissions should push their prices up and their expected returns down, the lack of strong empirical evidence of such an effect could be due to small changes in demand over the time period examined or noise in the security returns realized over a relatively short sample period.