Indicators of Environmental Performance and Energy Efficiency of Businesses under the Low-Carbon Economy Development

摘要

The long-established patterns of economic development and the associated nature of production and consumption can be no longer suggested as an example since wealthy countries and developed economies do not find these phenomena sustainable, while poor and hard developing countries cannot replicate them. In order for all countries of the world to progress to the level of development and consumption of the advanced countries, it is necessary to increase consumption of natural resources (namely, energy resources being an economic powerhouse) and, consequently, to increase the pollution level, which is impossible due to scarcity of natural resources and natural environmental restraints. In order to bring into balance economic development, environmental safety, and social welfare, there is a need to evaluate and analyse the situation especially in the sphere of production industry and energy consumption as well as emerging or potential risks and put in place appropriate measures. Traditional economic evaluation criteria are inadequate for this. This requires an integrated evaluation system of companies' economic, environmental and energy efficiency. The problem is urgent for modern Russian energy-consuming industrial sectors tending to settle down to a course of the low-carbon development. To solve this problem, the authors explore the existing evaluation system of environmental efficiency of Russian companies and propose additional evaluation criteria and indicators of the efficiency of the environmental management system from the standpoint of carbon-intensity reduction and production energy-efficiency increase.