GHG emissions inventory: A statistical analysis of the voluntary disclosure in Brazil

Abstract

GHG inventories have been applied in developing management strategies, being a fundamental tool for transparency and civilian participation. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has developed GHG inventory guidelines that are used by organisations to report their emissions. This work aimed to evaluate the inventories published in 2014 using a proposed voluntary disclosure index (VDi) applied in Brazilian federated units. Moreover, the variability of the voluntary disclosure was statistically assessed through a multiple linear regression (MLR) as a function of size and socio-economic parameters. The VDi results indicated a greater adhesion of the southeastern states to the GHG Protocol Program, being São Paulo the state with the highest VDi. From the MLR results, it was possible to verify that size and socio-economic parameters had significant and positive influence on the VDi at 10%-significance level. Finally, VDi has been shown to be an appropriate tool for assessing voluntary disclosures.