Environmental Performance and Corporate Earnings Per Share: Evidence from the Warsaw Stock Exchange

Reducing carbon dioxide (CO₂) and other greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions is of paramount importance because of their role in trapping atmospheric heat, a process that leads to global temperature increases commonly referred to as global warming. Rising temperatures, in turn, catalyse climate change, significantly affecting ecosystems, public health, economic stability, and the global environmental balance. Major corporations are thus increasingly expected to adopt policies aimed at minimising these adverse impacts. For publicly traded companies, this may influence financial metrics such as earnings per share (EPS). Recent regulatory changes have required many Polish companies to disclose Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) metrics, particularly for 2023. This represents a historic shift, although implementation delays have led many companies to report some metrics on a voluntary basis. The relationship between air pollution indicators – including the percentage of fossil fuel-derived energy, GHG intensity, and overall GHG footprint – and EPS can now be assessed within the Pope-Wang analytical framework. Early findings indicate a negative, though statistically insignificant, relationship between emissions and current EPS, as confirmed by Huber regression and quantile regression results. This suggests that emission-reduction measures have not yet had a substantial impact on the profitability of Warsaw Stock Exchange-listed companies that voluntarily reported ESG data.