Péter Molnár
58205179500
Publications - 10
Companies’ ESG performance under soft and hard regulation environment
Publication Name: Discover Sustainability
Publication Date: 2025-12-01
Volume: 6
Issue: 1
Page Range: Unknown
Description:
The growing integration of Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) factors into corporate decision-making and investment strategies has heightened the need for reliable and comparable ESG ratings. However, substantial divergence across rating agencies—driven by inconsistent methodologies, weighting schemes, and disclosure practices—poses challenges for investors, firms, and regulators. Addressing a key gap in the literature, this study investigates how regulatory environments influence ESG rating divergence by comparing hard, soft, and unregulated frameworks across five major economies: the United States, China, Japan, Germany, and India. ESG ratings were collected from Sustainalytics, S&P Global, and Refinitiv for the top 50 publicly listed companies in each country. The divergence was measured using absolute score differences between agencies, and statistical tests and cluster analysis were conducted to evaluate the impact of regulation on rating consistency. The results indicate that countries with strong, mandatory ESG disclosure regimes—such as Germany's CSRD and India’s BRSR—exhibit significantly lower levels of rating divergence, while unregulated markets like the USA and China display the highest discrepancies. Notably, Japan’s soft-law approach achieves alignment levels comparable to those of hard-law environments, emphasizing the role of regulatory enforcement. These findings reinforce both signaling and agency theories by demonstrating how regulatory oversight and transparency reduce information asymmetry and promote stakeholder trust. The study highlights the importance of direct supervision of ESG rating agencies and supports global harmonization of ESG disclosure standards as a means to enhance market efficiency and comparability.
Open Access: Yes
Dictionary-based assessment of European Sustainability Reporting Standard (ESRS) disclosure topics
Publication Name: Discover Sustainability
Publication Date: 2025-12-01
Volume: 6
Issue: 1
Page Range: Unknown
Description:
As the imperative for sustainable business practices and corporate responsibility has grown, the analysis and integration of Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) issues into corporate strategies has become a crucial aspect of business strategy. The paper assesses the ESG reporting preparedness of companies in the Central and Eastern European (CEE) region by analyzing their compliance with the European Sustainability Reporting Standards (ESRS). The study assesses the variability in disclosures across ESG pillars and examines their relationship with financial metrics using a test of independence and bootstrapped multiple regression. By employing an automated text analysis methodology on sustainability reports from top-performing companies, including Hungary, the Czech Republic, Poland, Austria, Slovenia, and Romania, the research identifies significant differences in reporting scores across various ESG disclosure topics. The results indicate that Climate Change (E1) scores are higher than those of other topics, suggesting an uneven emphasis on different aspects of sustainability. Furthermore, the analysis reveals that larger companies tend to achieve higher ESG scores, reflecting their greater resources for comprehensive and transparent reporting practices. The research contributes to the understanding of ESG reporting practices in the CEE region and highlights the importance of improvement in sustainability reporting to foster greater transparency and comparability. The findings suggest policy initiatives to encourage balanced reporting across all ESG topics and that companies, particularly smaller ones, could benefit from capacity-building efforts to enhance their reporting capabilities.
Open Access: Yes
ESG disclosure topics and reporting frameworks: exploratory research across automotive, construction, and energy industries
Publication Name: Discover Sustainability
Publication Date: 2025-12-01
Volume: 6
Issue: 1
Page Range: Unknown
Description:
Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) reporting and proper measurement of greenhouse gas emissions are becoming increasingly important for industries with substantial environmental impact. This research aims to assess the current state of ESG reporting practices and highlight areas for improvement across the automotive, construction and energy industries operating in the Central Eastern European (CEE) region. To achieve this aim, a multi-industry sustainability disclosure database was created and analyzed through a Python-based text-mining methodology, using term frequency-inverse document frequency and keyword-in-context analysis. The process involved extracting and preprocessing text from 60 sustainability reports for the year 2021, followed by constructing a custom dictionary of key ESG terms aligned with the European Sustainability Reporting Standards. The findings reveal considerable variance in the focus of qualitative disclosures across industries, particularly regarding climate change and biodiversity. The investigation underscores the need for enhanced transparency, consistent metrics, and rigorous validation in ESG reporting. The study also provides new insights into the technical possibilities of automated text analysis for sustainability reporting in the CEE region, and highlights key areas where improvement appears necessary.
Open Access: Yes
Measuring Corporate Compliance with the SDGs Based on the GRI’s ESG Reporting Methodology
Publication Name: Journal of Sustainability Research
Publication Date: 2025-01-01
Volume: 7
Issue: 1
Page Range: Unknown
Description:
Background: This research examines the efficiency of ESG reporting in corporate contributions toward achieving the SDGs, relative to the literature gaps and sectoral differences in reporting practices. It also highlights that full ESG disclosure is invariably instrumental in ensuring corporate transparency and accountability. Methods: The study used the GRI framework to analyze SDG compliance in sustainability reports from companies in the technology, automotive, energy, and health sectors. Results: Key findings include significant variations in SDG compliance across industries: the automotive sector demonstrated the highest compliance at 85%, while the technology sector showed the lowest at 49%. The study also found a notable difference between reported and substantiated SDGs, indicating that many companies engage in ‘rainbow washing’ or ‘cherry-picking’ SDGs to fit their agendas without fully integrating them into their strategies. The research concludes that although the GRI framework provide. Conclusions: The study urges the combination of other standards, such as ESRS and SASB, together with more intense regulatory frameworks and industry-specific guidelines to increase comparability and the credibility of the reports on sustainability.
Open Access: Yes
DOI: 10.20900/jsr20250010
Operational optimisation of integrated solar combined cooling, heating, and power systems in buildings considering demand response and carbon trading
Publication Name: Energy Conversion and Management
Publication Date: 2024-09-01
Volume: 315
Issue: Unknown
Page Range: Unknown
Description:
The Solar Combined Cooling, Heat, and Power (S-CCHP) system offers a promising solution to the energy crisis and environmental concerns. Its operation optimisation is essential due to intermittent solar irradiation. However, previous studies have concentrated on the “electricity-heating” subsystem and economic costs, with less emphasis on the integrated system's broader benefits and environmental impact. This study introduces an operational optimisation approach across “electricity-heating-cooling-gas” subsystems based on the design extension of the Residential Building Heating and Electricity Production (RESHeat) system. Specifically, the approach optimises operation from both the demand and supply sides, incorporating the demand response (DR) and Ladder Carbon Trading (LCT) on the demonstration in Limanowa, Poland, to balance economic and environmental impacts. The results show that the optimised electricity is reduced by 0.71 % per day while heating and cooling demands rise by 0.57% and 0.91%. PV/T panels provide 87.11% of electricity, with excess sold back to the grid in summer. DR combined with LCT in the extension design contributed to cutting costs by 16.15 % and CO2 by 57.79% compared with the initial design, underscoring the efficacy of collaborative operational in enhancing both economic and environmental performance.
Open Access: Yes
Sustainability accounting for greenhouse gas emissions measurement using the GREET LCA model: practical review of automotive ESG reporting
Publication Name: Clean Technologies and Environmental Policy
Publication Date: 2024-05-01
Volume: 26
Issue: 5
Page Range: 1631-1642
Description:
The production and personal use of passenger vehicles contribute significantly to greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, making personal transport a major contributor. In response to increasing pressure from regulators and consumers to lower emissions, original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) have introduced alternative powertrains, such as battery electric vehicles (BEVs). To assess the economic and environmental feasibility of BEVs, OEMs conduct various life cycle assessment (LCA) approaches as part of their internal management practices. However, the public presentation of their results is often ambiguous and of unverifiable quality. This study conducts a review of sustainability impact reporting using the GREET model, which is based on the total vehicle life cycle. The paper provides a summary of the input data requirements for validating emissions from both the fuel and vehicle cycles as part of the proposed model. The availability of the model components was tested against actual public corporate environmental, social and governance reporting disclosures of the largest global automotive OEMs, indicating a deficit in the public presentation of essential sustainability information. The implications of the research suggest that LCA models could benefit sustainability accounting by incorporating proper tagging during accounting practices and taking advantage of digital accounting and reporting practices such as the extensible business reporting language (XBRL). By further developing the model, sustainability reporting can benefit from its structure and workflow, thus ensuring improved information validity for stakeholders. Graphical abstract: (Figure presented.)
Open Access: Yes
Towards Predicting Business Activity Classes from European Digital Corporate Reports †
Publication Name: Engineering Proceedings
Publication Date: 2024-01-01
Volume: 79
Issue: 1
Page Range: Unknown
Description:
Digital financial reporting enables automated analyses on vast datasets. This study illustrates the benefits of integrating XBRL and machine learning. XBRL, an open-source financial reporting language, was used to create a unified database of over 5600 IFRS-tagged reports. The IFRS taxonomy tags containing textual data on company activities were analyzed using the Zero-Shot Learning algorithm to identify specific activities. This study highlights how digital reporting and machine learning can extract and analyze textual data, offering insights into company activities and demonstrating the potential of these technologies in financial reporting.
Open Access: Yes
Comparative assessment of ESG ratings methodology and results based on XBRL
Publication Name: Journal of Infrastructure Policy and Development
Publication Date: 2024-01-01
Volume: 8
Issue: 12
Page Range: Unknown
Description:
This study provides a comparative analysis of Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) ratings methodologies and explores the potential of eXtensible Business Reporting Language (XBRL) to enhance transparency and comparability in ESG reporting. Evaluating ratings from different agencies, the research identifies significant methodological inconsistencies that lead to conflicting information for investors and stakeholders. Statistical tests and adjusted rating scales confirm substantial divergence in ESG scores, primarily due to differing data categories and indicators used by rating firms. Using a sample of 265 European companies, the study demonstrates that individual ESG agencies report markedly different ratings for the same firms, which can mislead stakeholders. It proposes that XBRL based reporting can mitigate these inconsistencies by providing a standardized framework for data collection and reporting. XBRL enables accurate and efficient data collection, reducing human error and enhancing the transparency of ESG reports. The findings advocate for integrating XBRL in ESG reporting to achieve higher levels of comparability and reliability. The study calls for greater regulatory oversight and the adoption of standardized taxonomies in ESG reporting to ensure consistent and comparable data across sectors and jurisdictions. Despite challenges like the lack of a standardized taxonomy and inconsistent adoption, the research contends that XBRL can significantly improve the reliability of ESG ratings. In conclusion, this study suggests that standardizing ESG data through XBRL could provide a viable solution to the unreliability of current ESG rating scales, supporting sustainable business practices and informed decision making by investors.
Open Access: Yes
Overview of XBRL Taxonomy Usage for Structured Sustainability Reporting in European Filings
Publication Name: Chemical Engineering Transactions
Publication Date: 2023-01-01
Volume: 107
Issue: Unknown
Page Range: 577-582
Description:
The increasing requirement for businesses to disclose sustainability information digitally has prompted significant changes in the content and format of Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) disclosures. However, companies mandated to adapt to these changes face technological and information challenges regarding ‘what’ and ‘how’ to report. For European filers, the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD) and its requirements, the European Sustainability Reporting Standards (ESRS), along with the International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS S1 and S2), propose the use of the eXtensible Business Reporting Language (XBRL) as the anticipated technical solution for the digital data structure. The objective of this paper is to provide a methodological framework for effectively navigating the complex and interrelated concepts relevant to stakeholders. Rather than relying on cumbersome textual guides, this framework leverages an examination of existing taxonomies to offer readers insights into the essential glossary of disclosures and metrics considered crucial by official regulatory sources. Furthermore, the research discusses the emphasis on qualitative and narrative disclosures in ESG reporting and their feasibility of comparable results. Employing this methodology facilitates the implementation of corporate case studies and enables the analysis of mass amounts of future annual reports for comprehensive sustainability performance measurement.
Open Access: Yes
DOI: 10.3303/CET23107097
Linking sustainability reporting and energy use through global reporting initiative standards and sustainable development goals
Publication Name: Clean Technologies and Environmental Policy
Publication Date: 2024-01-01
Volume: Unknown
Issue: Unknown
Page Range: Unknown
Description:
This paper addresses the critical need for an integrated approach to sustainability reporting by examining the transition from internal combustion engine vehicles to electric vehicles within the automotive industry. By focusing on the top 8 highest-revenue global automakers in 2022, the study utilizes the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) standards and United Nations Sustainable Development Goals to assess contributions to SDG 7 (affordable and clean energy) and other pertinent indicators. A comprehensive content analysis and logistic regression analysis are employed to explore the correlation between energy use and compliance with GRI standards from 2018 to 2022. The findings reveal significant trends in sustainability reporting, with a noted decrease in quality in the final year analyzed. Specifically, GRI 302-3 (energy intensity) shows a significant negative relationship with energy consumption, indicating higher energy usage correlates with lower compliance. The study reinforces the necessity for more transparent and effective sustainability reporting frameworks to enhance corporate practices and drive progress toward sustainability goals. Graphical abstract: (Figure presented.)
Open Access: Yes
