Research on the ESG Transformation Pathways and Strategies for Domestic High-Emission Enterprises under the Dual-carbon Goals

摘要

Against the background of the dual carbon goal and carbon dual-control policies, ESG transformation has evolved from passive compliance into a core strategic initiative for high-emission enterprises. This study selects nine sample firms covering three typical high-emission industries (power, steel and chemical industries), and adopts policy text analysis, multi-case comparison and grounded theory to explore how dual-carbon pressure affects corporate ESG transformation paths alongside internal adaptive capabilities. The results show that external transformation pressures mainly stem from carbon regulatory constraints, green market demand and carbon trading market volatility, while internal driving capabilities consist of carbon accounting capacity, green technology reserves, financial support and internal governance quality. At present, most high-emission enterprises suffer from mismatched external pressure and internal capacity, accompanied by prominent dilemmas including unclear carbon asset valuation, insufficient green technology application and non-standard ESG information disclosure. Moreover, significant industrial heterogeneity leads to differentiated ESG transformation strategies among high-carbon enterprises. Accordingly, this paper establishes an integrated theoretical framework of “dual carbon pressure-enterprise capability-ESG response” targeted at industrial differences. The findings complement existing theories on corporate green and ESG transformation under carbon neutrality constraints. Besides, they provide practical operational guidance for high-emission enterprises to break transformation bottlenecks and realize coordinated development of carbon reduction and corporate value growth, as well as valuable references for governments to formulate differentiated industrial green policies and optimize green financial supervision systems.