Cover letter:

Every day, governments at all levels in China publish a large number of environmental administrative penalties, pollution source emission monitoring data, ECA (Environmental Compliance Approval) information on specific public networks. These environmental risk information related to the public interest is often over-dispersed, complex and professional, so it is rarely paid attention to by the public or reported in the media.

 

Since September 2020, China’s leading professional financial media, NBD(National Business Daily of China), has been working with IPE (Institute of Public and Environmental Affairs) , a well-known NGO organization in the field of environmental protection, to tap into China’s complex environmental risk data from the perspective of public corporate environmental responsibility and green investment.

 

We have used technical methods to monitor nearly 4,000 A-share listed companies in China and the affiliated companies they operate or invest in. Every week we analyzed this data in depth, looking for particularly noteworthy stories or bad behaviors, and using AI + Writing to form news that make these environmental risk events easy to understand and well-known, especially for holders or potential buyers of listed companies’ stocks to see the investment risks behind environmental problems.

 

NBD is a cutting-edge financial media in mainland China, known for revealing reports on listed companies and investment and financial management. It is committed to becoming the watchman of China’s economic society and capital market. The project was planned and led by the Beijing team of the company channel, the core news division of NBD .

 

This team mainly studies and reports on listed companies. They believe that the operation of enterprises is related to the public interest, and that supervision of the standardized operation of enterprises is beneficial to public welfare.

Description of portfolio:

The “A-share Green Report” project is a long-term data journalism project that continuously generates new stories and is constantly upgraded. In over one year from September 2020 to December 2021, we reported over 2000 environmental risk events through AI + Writing, and conducted 59 in-depth analysis reports , 5 A-share environmental risk lists and an annual report.

Every week, reporters fact-check and clean up the nearly 100 pieces of data which is provided by IPE, and then turn the data into instant news in batches by AI + Writing .The reporter then further cross-compared other types of data from listed companies to analyze and explore the impact of environmental incidents on listed companies, forming an in-depth analysis report “A-Share Green Weekly”. This project has pioneered a new model for mining news through dynamic data in China and has also created a unique environmental risk assessment list for listed companies in China.

The challenge we face is to check and clean up complex and diverse raw data, and to accurately match the equity relationships of related companies. At present, the reporter has worked out a set of efficient methods with technical assistance. In addition, the standardized evaluation of professional environmental information is also a challenge. But now we have jointly developed a set of persuasive environmental performance scoring mechanisms with our partner institutions IPE. In this project, the most complex part is to cooperate with different departments and different agencies. Such a workflow mechanism needs to be explored gradually in the long-term operation.

The impact of the “A-share Green Report” project is very obvious. It promotes more than 50 listed companies to actively fulfill their environmental responsibilities. There is also a lot of feedback from multiple stakeholders ,like overseas investment institutions beginning to focus the A -share they invested and we reported that had a lot of environmental administrative penalties.

Project links:

industry.nbd.com.cn/columns/1355

www.nbd.com.cn/articles/2021-12-22/2052120.html

docs.google.com/document/d/1rSkgABIG6MMhR_RBIcNZ-lYUYXQqbGRTfX8IqTHp7TU/edit?usp=sharing