Nachhaltigkeitsberichterstattung in europäischen Elektrizitätsversorgungsunternehmen

Under efficiency and ecological aspects, the already reputation-sensitive energy sector has been under critique for many years. Sustainability reporting, with its focus on the environmental, financial and social performance, is an accountability tool which has gained relevance in particular in large sized companies. In order to get an insight into the current sustainability accounting practice of European electric utilities a quantitative content analysis was performed by using the GRI-Guidelines. 87 reports were compared with the requirements of GRI-G4 (sector- neutral and sector-specific ones) in order to analyse the content of the reports and the extent of guideline compliance. The coverage rates were on average moderate. The social dimension is slightly underrepresented in sustainability reports of European electric utilities. There is room for more transparency along all three pillars. Additionally, it was evaluated how two factors, namely ownership and stock-exchange listing, influence the extent of sustainability reporting. The hypothesis that public electric utilities as stewards of the public interest outperform private electric utilities was not confirmed. However, a stock-exchange listing has a positive influence which can be explained with New Sociological Institutionalism.