Evaluating TCFD reporting-A new application of zero-shot analysis to climate-related financial disclosures

PLoS One. 2023 Nov 2;18(11):e0288052. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0288052. eCollection 2023.

Abstract

We examine climate-related disclosures in a large sample of reports published by banks that officially endorsed the recommendations of the Task Force for Climate-related Financial Disclosures (TCFD). In doing so, we introduce a new application of the zero-shot text classification. By developing a set of fine-grained TCFD labels, we show that zero-shot analysis is a useful tool for classifying climate-related disclosures without further model training. Overall, our findings indicate that corporate climate-related disclosures increased after the launch of the TCFD recommendations and following individual endorsements. However, there are marked differences in the extent of reporting by recommended disclosure topic, suggesting that some recommendations have not yet been fully met. Our findings yield important conclusions for the design of climate-related disclosure frameworks.

Publication types

  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

  • Conflict of Interest*
  • Disclosure*
  • Publications

Grants and funding

The authors report the following sources of funding: AA acknowledges the funding provided to the project SATISFY, which is part of the research fund Klimaschutz und Finanzwirtschaft (KlimFi) of the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (Grant No. 01LA2210C). CF acknowledges the funding by the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) from funds of Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation (BMZ), SDGnexus Network (Grant No. 57526248), program “exceed - Hochschulexzellenz in der Entwicklungszusammenarbeit”. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript. URL of each funder website: https://www.bmbf.de/bmbf/shareddocs/bekanntmachungen/de/2021/03/3508_bekanntmachung.htmlhttps://www.daad.de/en/information-services-for-higher-education-institutions/further-information-on-daad-programmes/exceed/.