Study of Green Information Disclosure on China’s Thermal
Power Plants
T Li, Y M Song
*
and Y Liu
Department of Economics and Management, North China Electric Power University,
No.2 Beinong Road, Changping District, Beijing
Abstract. This paper studies the way of green accounting information disclosure by
introducing the basic idea of input-output analysis and combining it with the emergy analysis
in the field of ecological economics and aims to explore a framework to disclose green
accounting information. Firstly, through the research on the status quo of China's green
information disclosure, it is found that there are two main problems in the disclosure of green
information in China, that is, incompleteness in disclosure content and difficulty in
measurement. Then, by taking China’s coal-fired thermal power generation as an example,
the main input resources, flow of directions and the final transformation forms are
summarized from the perspective of material flow. By analy zing the generation process of
coal-fired generation plants, this paper attempts to apply the basic idea of input-output
analysis to construct the preliminary framework of green information disclosure. Furthermore,
emergy analysis is introduced to convert physical data to monetary information to provide a
unified enterprise disclosure framework of green accounting.
1. Introduction
With the development of the global economy, China has entered a new era. Before 1970s, China’s
environmental problems were neglected because of the priority of quick success and instant benefits
on economic progress and lack of environmental protection policies [1]. However, Chinese
environmental development is no longer a mere economic progress recently, ecological development
has also been elevated to a strategic level and has become one of the most important goals in which
China pursues. The 18
th
National Congress of the Communist Party of China proposed the five-in-
one strategic layout. Before that, four-in-one layout has played a dominant role for the past decade
which was made up by economic construction, political construction, cultural construction and social
construction. Compared to four-in-one layout, ecological civilization construction is brought into
five-in-one layout and become China’s strategy for the first time. The requirements of coordinating
ecological development and economic development make the enterprises pay increasing attention to
social responsibilities while pursuing the goal of maximizing profits. The point is that they should
shoulder social and environmental responsibilities [1]. The traditional accounting has been strongly
influenced by new ideas. A growing number of countries have added the content of environmental
information disclosure under the traditional accounting information disclosure framework [3]. Green
accounting is a tool of recognition, collection, and analysis of environmental information which is
Li, T., Song, Y. and Liu, Y.
Study of Green Information Disclosure on China’s Thermal Power Plants.
In Proceedings of the International Workshop on Environmental Management, Science and Engineering (IWEMSE 2018), pages 469-480
ISBN: 978-989-758-344-5
Copyright © 2018 by SCITEPRESS – Science and Technology Publications, Lda. All rights reserved
469

also known as environmental management accounting (EMA) by the international community [4].
The researches of F A Beams [5]and J T Marlin [6] on the social costs of pollution and the
accounting of pollution have created a new era of green accounting and researches on green
accounting have begun to grow.
The United Nations released the System of Integrated Environment and Economic Accounting
(SEEA) [7] in 1993. As a product of the sustainable development economy, it is mainly used for the
implementation of national accounts under the influence of environmental factors. Afterwards, the
UN Department of Public Information Strategic Communications Division (UNDSD) put forward
specific methods for implementing environmental management accounting [8]. The UNDSD EMA
method includes four types of environmental expenditures (costs) and one type of environmental
income measured by seven environmental media. By the implementation of this classification,
companies can find hidden costs and relevant cost savings. Since then, Gale[9]applied this method to
a Canadian manufacturing company and found that the natural and environmental costs under
traditional accounting were underestimated by approximately 50%.
As the topic of corporate social responsibility continues to intensify, more and more scholars
begin to pay attention to the relationship between organizational behavior and the environment [10].
One study found that environmentally sensitive organizations such as mining, chemical,
pharmaceutical and oil extraction are more likely to implement green accounting, while legal
requirements also force these industries to actively use environmental accounting as a method of
internal management[11]. Moreover, due to the limitation of organizational capital, the effective
utilization of environmental resource capital also urges managers to pay more attention to
environmental strategy [12]. In addition, the strategic direction of the enterprise, the industry in
which it operates and the size of the organization also have a great relationship with the use of
environmental accounting [13].However, although green accounting has received growing attention,
its application still faces many difficulties, lack of learning at the organizational level, excessive
attention to economic performance and lack of guidance on the application of environmental
accounting[14]have seriously hampered the development of green accounting.
China entered the ranks of the newly industrialized nations (NICs) in 2011, and the contradiction
between economic growth and environmental development has become increasingly prominent [15].
Recycling economy and green economy have become the theme of the development of new era. The
demand for green information is increasingly highlighted [16]. In the 1990s, Jiashu Ge
[17]introduced the concept of environmental accounting into China for the first time, marking the
beginning of China's systematic study of green accounting. So far, theorists have tentatively set up
the theoretical framework of green accounting [18] and pointed out that enterprises are facing serious
environmental risks and environmental liabilities [19]. However, there are only few studies on the
methods of green information disclosure in China. At present, the disclosure of green information
draws basically on traditional financial accounting and generates a series of forms such as
environmental balance sheet, environmental cash flow statement and environmental profit statement
[20]. However, there is no further study on how to quantify the green information which is of vital
importance in the information age.
What kind of green information should organizations disclose to the general public? How to
quantify the green information to make it more comparable? By analyzing the current situation of
China's green accounting information disclosure, this paper attempts to use the basic idea of input-
output analysis to build the preliminary framework of green information disclosure, taking the coal-
fired thermal power plant as an example. Also, by introducing the theory of emergy analysis into the
framework of green information disclosure, this research may help to solve the problem of the
current measurement dilemma of green information.
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2. Green information disclosure in China
The demand for green information is the main motivation for enterprises’ disclose behaviors.
Although an increasing number of public listed companies in China have disclosed Corporate Social
Responsibility Report (CSR) in order to meet the economic decision-making needs of stakeholders
[21] in recent decades, the performance of environmental and social responsibility information in the
report is not enough to satisfy the needs of the public. Therefore, this paper studies the status quo of
Chinese corporate green information disclosure to find out the main problems existing in the green
information disclosure, and attempts to put forward effective solutions.
2.1. The institutional background of green information disclosure
The 1989 Environmental Protection Law stipulates that the government's environmental protection
authorities shall regularly public environmental accident reports (article 11). Projects that
endangering the environment must firstly submit environmental impact assessment reports to
environmental authorities(article 13). The 1989 Environmental Protection Law can be regarded as a
preliminary exploration of environmental information disclosure, but it is limited to a one-way
enterprise-government disclosure pattern. Although the 1989 Environmental Protection Law
regulates that enterprises should bear legal responsibility for environmental pollution, it lacks explicit
requirements on green information disclosure.
In the year 2015, Chinese government issued a new "Environmental Protection Law of the
People's Republic of China" in response to a series of problems facing China's environmental
protection in the new era. The environmental protection supervision and management work has
officially become the examination content of government staff and the result of the examination will
be disclosed to the social public (article 26).Also, the government shall promptly assess the
environmental impact and losses for potential environmental and release the result to the social
public (article 47). The law also adds a separate chapter on information disclosure and public
participation, emphasizing the importance of public disclosure of environmental information.
However, the new Environmental Protection Law only requires enterprises to disclose the discharge
and treatment of major pollutants, no specific guidelines on information disclosure have been issued,
resulting in the lack of comparability of environmental information disclosed by industries.
2.2. Practice of green information disclosure on enterprises
Table 1. The main content of green information disclosure.
Item
number
Content
1
Environmental protection guidelines, annual environmental protection objectives and achievements
2
Total annual resource consumption
3
Information on investment of environmental protection and environmental technology development
4
Type, volume and content of pollutants discharged and where the pollutants are discharged into
5
Information on the handling and disposal of waste generated from production Information on
recycling and comprehensive use of waste products
6
Information on the construction and operation of facilities
7
Voluntary agreement with environmental protection departments
8
Information on performance of social responsibilities
9
Environmental information voluntarily disclosed
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The current green information disclosure forms of listed companies in China mainly include annual
report, CSR report and environment report. Environmental Protection Administration of China
promulgated the "Measures on Open Environmental Information" to encourage enterprises to
voluntarily disclose the environmental information and heavy polluting enterprises mandatorily
demanded to disclose environmental information. Enterprises should announce to public that the
company follows the relevant environmental protection guidelines, company’s annual environment
protection goals and achievements, annual resource consumption, etc., as shown in Table 1:
With the exception of heavily polluting enterprises, companies in other industries tend to use
environmental disclosure as a selective strategy because they have no mandatory requirements. As a
result, hey only disclose information that helps to enhance their corporate image and create a
reputation for their business [22]. In selecting the content for disclosure, they are preferable to give
priority to publicizing information on environmental benefits and social responsibility to the general
public, and to guide the information audience to focus on the positive output produced by enterprises.
This kind of merit-based selection behaviour of enterprises leads to the incompleteness of green
information disclosure content and the non-uniform form of disclosure. After a series of production
processes, a company's products are usually accompanied by negative environmental outputs, such as
sewage and exhaust emissions in addition to products flowing into the market that have a realizable
value. These negative outputs eventually flow to the natural environment and need to be governed
thereby with a large amount of expenditures which makes up the environmental cost of enterprises.
Environmental cost standing at the last link of the production chain is often ignored by enterprises
[23], and rarely reflected in the environmental report, resulting in an imbalance between input and
output.
Most enterprises disclose green information mainly in the form of narratives, lacking descriptions
in physical quantity and market value. So the information disclosed by different enterprises lacks
comparability. Some researches have studied the quality of corporate social responsibility reports
issued by China's transportation industry and found that over 80% of the reports failed to achieve
their aims. One of the reasons is that there is no comparability between reports[24]. Some scholars
use computers to extract and classify the diction of green information disclosed by the enterprises,
then measure the quality of green information disclosure from the perspective of semantic analysis
and find that the industry, property rights and geographical areas will reduce the comparability of
corporate green information disclosure[25]. The reason why the above problems arise is mainly due
to the difficulty of quantifying green information while it is easier for enterprises to describe what
laws and regulations they have followed in protecting the environment, what kinds of green
investment projects are carried out, but the extent and value of such items are difficult to measure.
In this paper, the basic idea of input-output analysis combined with the emergy analysis from eco-
economics is introduced to solve the problem of measurement and disclosure of green accounting
information theoretically. The input-output analysis is mainly used to define the content of green
information which is easily understood when illustrating the disclosure framework of green
information. Emergy is a type of certain energy stored in another kind of energy. Each substance is
formed by a specific kind of energy, and each kind of energy can be converted into the same unit of
measurement (solar emejoules) by emergy transformity. The introduction of emergy analysis aims to
solve the problem of measurement dilemma and incomparability of various sorts of information. This
paper attempts to put forward a full input-full output-full information coverage disclosure framework
to provide potential references for enterprises to disclose green information.
3. Green information disclosure framework based on China's coal-fired thermal power plants
As one of the main energy consuming country, China’s coal-fired thermal power occupies an
important position in the national economic field. Although the government vigorously advocates
clean energy generation in recent years, due to the limitation of capital and technical conditions, coal-
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fired thermal power generation still plays a dominant role. Besides, coal-fired thermal power
generation has a huge impact on environment especially for its pollutant emission. Therefore, this
paper takes coal-fired thermal power generation as an example to discuss the application input-output
framework of green accounting information disclosure.
3.1. The basic idea of input-output analysis on green accounting
Input-output analysis [26] is a quantitative analysis of the interdependence of inputs and outputs
among various parts of an economy. It can be applied to the entire national economy as well as
corporations or specific corporate sector. Input refers to the consumption of raw materials, labor,
machinery and equipment consumed during the production and business activities. Output refers to
the distribution of products after the production process. Application of input-output analysis can
intuitively reflect the internal links of production and operation between various departments of
enterprises. The core idea of input-output analysis in this research can be summarized as substance
conservation, that is, all inputs are outputted in a certain form.
The input and output is imbalanced in modern financial accounting to the aspect of confirmation,
measurement and accounting [27]. Modern financial accounting only contains the cost of monetary
item for the measurement of input, but ignoring the cost of environmental resources. Meanwhile, in
the determination of output, financial accounting only confirm the economic value of the product, but
neglecting the harmful products, resulting in an imbalance between input and output. Green
accounting aims to make up for the lack of two deficiencies mentioned above. As shown in Figure 1,
the main difference between green accounting and financial accounting lies in the scope of its
accounting object. Accounting objects for financial accounting include resources available for
production and operation such as raw materials, human resources, machinery and equipment, capital
investment and other quantifiable resources. Output of financial accounting mainly targets in positive
products that eventually enter to the market and help the organization to obtain profits. The object of
green accounting is more extensive, it reflects the use of environmental resources, such as sunlight,
air, surface soil loss, etc. At the same time, green accounting also deals with environmental pollution
of the negative products as well as some neutral products which ultimately discharge into the natural
environment but the degree of damage is not clear.
Figure1. The main difference between green accounting and financial accounting.
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Input-output analysis under the green accounting is a full input-full output-full coverage of
information disclosure method. All resources invested by the enterprise should be outputted in a
certain form. For example, coal is the main raw material inputs of coal-fired power plant which
contains largely of carbon. The final product of coal-burning is disclosed in the form of electricity
energy under the traditional financial accounting framework. However, the carbon element should
also be discharged as CO
x
and eventually emitted to the environment. Although some enterprises
have already mentioned their contributions in regard to the energy conservation and emission
reduction in the annual report, the disclosure is confined to describing whether the emission of CO
x
is
excessive and no specific emission quantity is released. The green accounting approach studied in
this paper aims at using a full coverage information disclosure way to guide enterprises in disclosing
all inputs and outputs so as to achieve a substantial balance between investment and production.
3.2. The main input and output of coal-fired thermal power plants
For the application of input-output analysis on green information disclosure, it is necessary to
understand the production and operation process of all input resources and all output products. This
paper simplifies the generation process of coal-fired thermal power plant from the perspective of
material flow and summarizes the main input items, the flow of direction and the final transformation
forms, which lays the foundation for the green information disclosure.
Coal-fired power plant involves four kinds of energy conversion. As shown in figure 2, the
chemical energy of the fuel is firstly transformed into heat energy after being burned in the boiler.
Then, the water absorbs heat energy and becomes steam to drive the steam turbine to generate
mechanical energy. Finally, the generator produces the final product, electric energy.
Figure 2.The energy conversion of coal-fired thermal power generation.
Figure 3 shows the main generation process of coal-fired power plants in China. The main input
resources, flow of directions and the final transformation forms are summarized from the perspective
of material flow. The dotted line in the figure divides it into two parts, with the left side
demonstrating the main input resources and the right side displays the output products. Due to the
diversity in the scale and equipment among different coal-fired thermal power plants in China, the
resource conversion efficiency is uneven. Therefore, this paper assumes that all the input resources
are 100% converted into output in order to theoretically explain the feasibility of the application of
input-output analysis in the green information disclosure.
During the preparation work, coal is pulverized and mixed with air in order to make it sufficient
burning. After that, pulverized coal is sent into the boiler as shown in path ① during combustion
process in which generating heat energy. Heat then converts water into water vapor to drive the
steam turbine. Finally the turbine drives the generator to generate electricity which is mandatorily
disclosed in the corporate annual report as the main source of revenue.
In addition to electrical energy, a large number of by-products are contained in the gas generated
by the boiler. Those by-products are mainly composed of dust, coal cinder and harmful gases (SO
x
,
NO
x
, CO
2
) which are permitted to discharge only after a series of environmental governance
equipment such as desulfurization device, denitration device and dedusting device. Currently, coal-
fired thermal power plants mainly use dust collector to control fly ash pollution, remove sulfur in flue
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474

gas with desulfurization device, and reduce the formation of nitrogen oxides through the reasonable
design and operation of the boiler.
One of the results of coal burning is the generation of SO
x
, of which SO
2
will have a great harm to
the environment. SO
2
is the main cause of air pollution and acid rain and for now flue gas
desulfurization is considered as the most effective way to control the pollution of SO
2
. As shown in
path ②, the limestone powder is used to wash the flue gas so that the two substances can react to
remove SO
2
and ultimately produce gypsum which can be comprehensively utilized without
secondary pollution. Besides, a small part of incompletely reacted SO
2
will be emitted to the air. In
addition to SO
x
, there is a large amount of NO
x
contained in the boiler gas because of coal
combustion. The NO in the flue gas can be oxidized into NO
2
after being discharged into the
atmosphere, which is very harmful to the human body. As shown in path ③, at present, the catalyst
and certain reductant is mainly used in China to converse NO
x
in the flue gas to N
2
and H
2
O, thereby
reducing the pollution of the environment and releasing only a tiny amount of NO
2
into the
atmosphere. In addition, the slag and ash generated by coal-fired thermal power plants can be
transported to the ash field for secondary utilization after specific treatment, as shown in path ④.
Also, coal combustion produces large amounts of CO
2
and soot as shown in path ⑤. CO
2
emissions
from boilers account for about 30% of China's carbon dioxide emissions which becomes the main
reason for the global warming. At present, the relevant department is actively implementing energy
saving and emission reduction measures to control the emission of CO
2
.
Figure 3. Main generation process of coal-fired power plants.
3.3. Green information disclosure framework of coal-fired thermal power plants
After defining the production process and resource consumed of an enterprise, it is necessary to make
a comprehensive green information disclosure. Under the principle of input-output analysis, the total
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475

input of an enterprise is equal to the total output. Although these outputs are not necessarily market-
product-specific, they should also be disclosed about their subsequent processing, especially those
that have a negative impact on the environment and require further tracking by enterprise until the
substance enters in nature with minimal impact. Only in this way can the company's green mission be
seen as terminated. Figure 4 shows a preliminary framework for green information based on the idea
of input-output analysis with the example of coal-fired thermal power enterprises.
Figure 4. Green information disclosure framework of coal-fired thermal power plant.
On the disclosure of green information, enterprises firstly need to illustrate all the inputs and
outputs in order to facilitate information audiences to understand the whole production and operation
process of enterprises. This is also an initial step to achieve full input-full output- full information
coverage objective. Taking coal-fired thermal power plants as an example (assuming that the
resource conversion efficiency is 100%), as shown in Figure 4, inputs include air, coal, etc. while
outputs refers to electricity, gypsum, etc. All inputs are outputted in a corresponding form.
From the perspective of information disclosure, the total output of enterprises can be divided into
three categories: market output, environment output and other output. Market output means output
flowing to the market. Environment output means output flowing to natural environment and other
output means output flowing in other directions.
For market output such as electricity and gypsum, enterprises can make quantitative information
disclosure in the annual report. Such output secedes from the enterprise information disc losure
process since the sale to a third party, and the financial disclosure mission of the enterprise is
terminated.
For environment output such as N
2
, CO
2
, SO
2
, soot and a portion of waste water, companies need
to disclose the implementation situation of emission standards, actual emissions, governance costs
and emission paths to prove that this part of the environmental output being reasonable followed up.
This also reflects the corporate performance of environmental and social responsibility. When these
emissions are finally disposed into the environment and enter into the natural circulation, the green
mission of the enterprise is terminated.
For other output such as recyclable water, slag and ash temporarily stored, companies need to
explain the circulation and processing mode.
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4. Application of emergy analysis on green information disclosure
The construction of green information disclosure framework aims to initially solve the problem of
incompleteness and inconsistency of green information disclosure. However, in the era of big data,
there is a strong demand on quantitative information. The traditional disclosure of green information
is based on the "discharge list" of emission standards set by the relevant departments, which only
lists the emission of harmful substances. However, because of the differences in units of
measurement between different emission sources, there exists a lack of comparability on various data.
In response to this problem, this paper introduces the method of emergy analysis in the field of
ecological economics in order to solve the problems encountered in the measurement of green
information.
4.1. Introduction of emergy analysis
Emergy analysis is a theory of ecological economics proposed by H.T. Odum [28]. Emergy refers to
a type of certain energy stored in another kind of energy. Emergy analysis assumes that any form of
energy originates from solar energy, so all kinds of energy in the natural environment can be
measured in a unified unit which is solar emejoules (sej). In the eco-economy, all sorts of energy and
materials with different units can be converted into the same unit of measure through emergy
transformity so that they can be quantitatively measured and compared to analyze the real benefits of
environmental resources.
Emergy theory regards the ecosystem as a self-organizing energy system which is similar to the
flow of the food chain. The energy is accompanied by a certain amount of loss at every stage of
economic production. Therefore, as the energy goes from a low level (solar energy) to a high level
(consumer energy at different stage of conversion), the amount of energy showed a declining trend,
while the energy level is increasing. In an eco-economic system, the energy flow always flows from a
low energy level (such as solar energy) to a high energy level (such as electricity) [29].
4.2. Application of emergy analysis on green information disclosure framework
One of the biggest problems in green accounting when disclosing information is the inability to
quantify the resources. The use of emergy theory may help to solve this problem. Although all the
inputs and outputs have been summarized in the green information disclosure framework shown in
Figure 4, the units for various kinds of substances are different (for example, coal is measured in tons
and wastewater is measured in cubic meters), resulting in the lack of comparability between them
which is not conducive to evaluate and compare enterprise's environmental protection performance.
Therefore, as shown in Figure 5, after obtaining all the input and output data information of an eco-
economic system, resources of different units can be first converted into solar emejoules. This step
needs to use the emergy transformity as a conversion intermediary. Emergy transformity is the
amount of another energy contained per unit of a material or energy. In emergy analysis, the
commonly used transformity is solar transformity which is the the amount of solar energy contained
per unit of a material or energy .The solar transformity increases as the energy level increases.
Figure 5. Application of emergy analysis on green information disclosure framework.
After converting the physical consumption into the same unit through the conversion of the
emergy transformity, the solar emejoules obtained is still a material unit and cannot become the
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financial information commonly understood by the majority of investors. Therefore, further
conversion through the emergy / money ratio is required. The emergy / money ratio is the ratio of the
total annual energy value of a country or region divided by GDP of that country or region in a year.
The higher the ratio, the greater the emergy wealth can be exchanged by the individual units, the
greater the proportion of natural resources made up in the national economy. This often indicates that
the country or region has a strong dependence on environmental resources, and such features are
usually found in the extensive economies [30].
As shown in figure 5, it is known that the solar emejoules of a certain substance can be converted
into the corresponding monetary value, that is, quantified green accounting information through the
emergy /money ratio. Thereby, investors can be conducted to compare various resources consumed
by an enterprise through unified calculation of different kinds of results. It should be noted that the
monetary value is different from the currency used in traditional financial reports. The value of the
monetary value in emergy analysis refers to the equivalent market value of the currency rather than
the actual cost of purchasing such resources.
5. Conclusions
As an emerging branch of management accounting, the implementation of green accounting mainly
focuses on the disclosure of green information. However, although the concept of green accounting
has been proposed in China for a long time, there is a lack of a unified framework and method to
apply green information to the practice of enterprises.
This paper aims to combine the basic idea of input-output analysis, take the green information
disclosure of China's coal-fired thermal power plants as an example, apply the method of emergy
analysis from ecological economics to the disclosure of information in green accounting and try to
provide a unified enterprise disclosure framework of green accounting. First of all, through the
research on the status quo of China's green information disclosure, it is found that there are some
problems in the disclosure of green information in China, such as incompleteness in disclosure
content and difficulty in measurement. In view of the above dilemma, this paper puts forward a
tentative idea of setting up a green information disclosing framework by using the input-output
analysis. After making clear of the production process and material inputs and outputs of an
enterprises, this paper attempts to set up an information disclosure framework with full input-full
output-full information coverage assumption. In addition, for the measurement of green information
disclosure, this research introduces the theory of emergy analysis from eco-economics into the
framework of green information disclosure and attempts to convert all input and output substances
into a unified unit of measurement in order to evaluate the green information preferably.
However, this article also has some shortcomings in the method of the research. Taking the
Chinese coal-fired thermal power generation plants as an example, the green information disclosure
framework set up in this paper may have some omissions in the recognition of input and output
substances due to professional constraints when taking the Chinese coal-fired thermal power
generation plants as an example. Such defect may cause some scalability of the disclosure content of
green information. Secondly, this paper proposes that emergy analysis method can measure all the
input and output of enterprises theoretically. However, this method has not been widely used in
China at present, and the data collection needs a lot of costs. Therefore, its application effect needs to
be further studied.
Acknowledgment
My deepest gratitude goes first and foremost to Professor Li , my supervisor, for his constant
encouragement and guidance. He has walked me through all the stages of the writing of this paper.
Without his consistent and illuminating instruction, this thesis could not have reached its present
form. Second, I would like to express my heartfelt gratitude to Yang Liu of Institute of finance and
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478

economics, who has instructed and helped me a lot during the past few months. I also owe my sincere
gratitude to my friends and family who gave me their help and time in listening to me and helping me
to work out my problems during the difficult course of the thesis.
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