Digital technology has developed rapidly in recent years, and information digitization can assist enterprises not only in reducing costs, improving efficiency, upgrading products and services, and transforming business models digitally, but also in moving toward environmental protection, emphasizing the importance of social responsibility, and enhancing the ESG goals of corporate governance. In 2021, the United Nations Climate Conference (COP26) adopted the goal of reducing global carbon emissions by 45% by 2030. However, in the post-COVID-19 era, when global economic recovery is urgently needed, how to effectively promote and assist in the “sustainable green” transformation has become a common topic that is actively discussed and valued internationally.
The European Union first proposed the concept of “Twin Transformation” in 2021, aiming to illustrate that in order to comply with international trends, enterprises must simultaneously balance “sustainability” and “digital transformation” to enhance operational resilience and international competitiveness. In response to international development trends, Taiwan actively responds to global trends, and is committed to promoting the twin transformation of its capital market, and enhancing the transparency and quality of ESG information disclosure in the market to provide investors with more valuable support for their decisions.
Under the gradual guidance of the regulatory authorities’ policies, Taiwanese enterprises have achieved phased achievements in ESG information disclosure. However, due to the multitude of ESG related standards and frameworks, and enterprises’ disclosure of their sustainability performance in various places (such as company websites and sustainability reports), it is difficult for investors and the general public to effectively compare the sustainability performance of different companies or even industries. For this reason, the TWSE launched the two major platforms of the “ESG Digital Platform” and “ESG InfoHub ESG” for the goal of information digitization, expecting to integrate diversified market information and assist TWSE listed companies in efficiently disclosing ESG-related information and data in a unified format through a more user-friendly reporting interface, and present the highlights of TWSE listed companies’ sustainability performance in a visualized dashboard for market participants’ investment decisions and to serve as a reference for corporate sustainability transformation.
A Brand New ESG Digital Platform to Assist in ESG Digital Development
https://esggenplus.twse.com.tw/inquiry/info/individual
Given the increasing global emphasis on sustainability information, consistent and comparable ESG information has become an important aid in attracting investment and financing among the numerous international sustainable development standards and frameworks at the moment. The ESG Digital Platform established by the TWSE in 2024 covers four major disclosure items for all TWSE listed companies, including “ESG Information Disclosure,” “Sustainability Report,” “Greenhouse Gas Emissions and Reduction Information,” and “Sustainable Economic Activities,” which are explained as follows:
I. ESG Information Disclosure
To enhance the transparency of enterprise ESG information, TWSE listed companies are required to annually declare “Corporate Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) information,” which already includes 20 important topics in 2025, covering a total of 100 indicators across various ESG aspects. Through the launch of the ESG Digital Platform, an interface for enterprise declarations in a unified format is provided to greatly improve the efficiency of corporate declaration.
In addition to optimizing enterprise declarations, the ESG Digital Platform provides investor-friendly query pages where investors may search for their desired sustainability information under “Individual Companies” and “Summary Information,” as well as market and industry categories, and ESG indicator topics. The consistent disclosure interface of the platform also enhances the comparability of ESG information.
II. Sustainability Report
The sustainability report, as an important tool for companies to showcase their sustainable management results and governance performance, is crucial for enhancing corporate social responsibility and communicating with investors. According to the TWSE’s “Measures for the Preparation and Filing of Sustainability Reports by TWSE Listed Companies” (hereinafter referred to as the “Measures”), all TWSE listed companies are required to prepare and file their sustainability reports starting from 2025. The TWSE’s ESG Digital Platform integrates the declaration and inquiry of the sustainability reports of TWSE/TPEx listed companies. Other than optimizing the convenience of enterprise-end declarations, it provides investors with a more user-friendly way to obtain sustainability reports.
The ESG Digital Platform has four query criteria, namely “issuing market,” “reporting year,” “industry,” and “company code,” which allow investors to quickly search for the sustainability report of the company they want to inquire about, and provide basic information about the sustainability report, including the period covered by the report, the standards for its preparation, whether it has been assured by a third-party verification unit or accountant, and the standards and opinion adopted for the assurance.
As of the end of 2024, 722 TWSE listed companies have completed their 2023 sustainability report filing. The integration and disclosure of information through the ESG Digital Platform greatly improve the convenience of investor inquiries, effectively reducing the time and resources required for investors to conduct their own searches on various company websites, while enhancing the transparency of sustainability information.
III. Greenhouse Gas Emission and Reduction Information
In order to enhance enterprises’ attention to reducing greenhouse gas emissions and achieve the national goal of net-zero emissions by 2050, enterprises need to complete greenhouse gas inventory and affirmation in stages in accordance with the FSC’s “Sustainable Development Guidemap for TWSE and TPEx Listed Companies” and related regulations.
In addition, information on greenhouse gas emissions and reductions by enterprises is also a focus of external parties. Therefore, following the timeline of the aforementioned roadmap, this item will gradually transition from voluntary disclosure, which was encouraged in the past, to mandatory disclosure in stages starting from 2025, based on the company’s capital scale and the industry to which it belongs.
The specific information that should be disclosed mainly includes the impact of greenhouse gas emissions on the enterprise, the degree of impact, and the strategies, methods, and goals for greenhouse gas management. As of the end of 2024, 416 TWSE listed companies have completed the declaration of greenhouse gas emissions and reduction information for the year 2023. It is expected that enterprises will be gradually guided to inventory their greenhouse gas emissions through regulations and subsequently formulate carbon reduction targets, strategies, and specific action plans.
IV. Sustainable Economic Activities
In order to encourage the financial industry to channel funds into sustainable economic activities and to drive enterprises’ sustainable development, carbon reduction, and transformation, the FSC, together with the Ministry of Environment, the Ministry of Economic Affairs, the Ministry of Transportation and Communications, and the Ministry of the Interior, jointly announced the first edition of the “Reference Guidelines for Recognition of Sustainable Economic Activities” (hereinafter referred to as the Guidelines) in December 2022. This aims to encourage TWSE/TPEx listed companies to refer to the Guidelines, examine whether their main economic activities are sustainable, and voluntarily disclose them.
On December 31, 2024, the FSC and relevant agencies jointly announced the second edition of the Guidelines and the “Matters Suggested to Be Covered by the Transformation Plan” to expand the industry scope applicable and establish relevant judgment standards, with the aim of promoting financial institutions’ support to industries to jointly drive sustainable development.
In order to effectively integrate sustainability information, the ESG Digital Platform also provides all TWSE/TPEx listed companies with a function for a questionnaire on the declaration of sustainable economic activities. The TWSE will also comply with the policies and regulations of the FSC to update its website functions on a rolling basis and encourage companies to voluntarily disclose relevant information to assist them in accelerating their sustainability transformation.
ESG InfoHub – A One-Stop Integrated Query Website to Fully Grasp ESG Information
https://esg.twse.com.tw/ESG/front/en/#/main/home
The sustainability topic is receiving increasing attention from investors and businesses around the world, and external parties are paying more and more attention to companies’ ESG performance. In addition, companies need to measure their performance through ESG indicators, carry out transformation, and seize opportunities for sustainable growth. With its important role in the capital market and its goals of sharing and applying data and information, as well as promoting ESG investment and guiding the investment of sustainable capital, the TWSE integrated the ESG information declared by enterprises and launched the ESG InfoHub in July 2023. Through this brand-new one-stop ESG website, the TWSE aims to establish sustainability as a niche for Taiwanese companies in international competition and enhance the overall competitiveness of Taiwan’s capital market.
The ESG InfoHub covers the following six dimensions, and provides all the sustainability information needed by external parties in a visual way:
I. Market Highlights
Market Highlights provides recent ESG development highlights of Taiwan’s capital market and TWSE listed companies, including sustainability reports, greenhouse gas emissions, corporate governance, equality and diversity, stewardship, and green finance which have been the focus of market attention recently. Taking sustainability reports as an example, by the end of 2024, 722 TWSE listed companies will have declared their 2023 sustainability reports, accounting for 72.42% of all TWSE listed companies. The report assurance rate also reached 64.40%, demonstrating the importance that TWSE listed companies attach to the disclosure of sustainability information. In terms of equality and diversity, the statistical data shows that the number of female directors in TWSE listed companies has been rising year by year, with over 86.13% of TWSE listed companies having female directors on their boards.
II. ESG Dashboard for TWSE Listed Companies
The most distinctive “Listed Company ESG Dashboards” function of the ESG InfoHub allows investors to easily query and compare the ESG information of TWSE listed companies, and quickly analyze various ESG indicators for cross-company and cross-industry comparisons through the Dashboard’s visual image function to understand the changes.
The Dashboard of TWSE listed companies provides the following three ways to present the sustainability actions of enterprises: individual company, cross industry, and cross company. Sustainability indicators which are comparable and attended to by external parties are selected from the sustainability indicators declared by enterprises for visual display, and a summary of the E, S, and G dimensions is shown as follows：
In addition to the Dashboard’s presentation of the sustainability achievements of the aforementioned enterprises, the major negative ESG events of these companies also serve as an important reference for the ESG performance of TWSE listed companies. To provide ESG equity reference information, the ESG InfoHub also integrates information about major work safety incidents, disasters, environmental pollution, and penalties imposed by regulatory authorities, and provides individual-company, cross-company, and cross-industry comparison functions. In addition to facilitating the quick querying of penalty information and advanced comparisons of TWSE listed companies, it achieves the market management goal of investor protection.
III. ESG Product Information
Taiwan’s capital market follows the international trend of sustainability and has issued a variety of ESG products. To facilitate investors’ understanding of ESG-related products, the ESG InfoHub provides links to enterprise sustainability-related indices, ESG index-based products, sustainable development bonds, the futures market ESG information platform, and the ESG fund section to assist investors in finding suitable investment products.
IV. ESG Related Resources
Given the continuous acceleration of sustainability transformation, the ESG InfoHub integrates international and domestic ESG related regulations and standards, ESG advocacy information, and the ESG IR Platform to enable the public to quickly grasp the latest ESG development information and enhance the efficiency of companies and investors in acquiring sustainability information.
V. Greenhouse Gas Section
To assist enterprises in facing the challenges of climate change, jointly achieving Taiwan’s 2050 net-zero emissions goal, and complying with the schedule of the FSC’s “Sustainable Development Guidemap for TWSE and TPEx Listed Companies” for greenhouse gas inventory and assurance, the ESG InfoHub also established a dedicated greenhouse gas inventory page to facilitate enterprises’ understanding of the disclosure schedule together with Q&As, inventory guidelines, inventory courses, and other related information in one go, in order to help them achieve net-zero transformation in this wave of sustainability.
VI. Sustainability Curriculum
The Sustainability Curriculum Section gathers information about a variety of forums, seminars, and professional talent development courses related to sustainability to provide online learning resources for enterprises to cultivate more sustainability talents to help strengthen personal and organizational knowledge of sustainable development, and integrate sustainable values into company culture and daily operations, thereby responding to challenges and changes in the globalized market.
Since its launch, the ESG InfoHub website has received a positive response from external parties and was awarded the Silver Award in the Social Group of the “8th PwC Sustainable Influence Award” in 2024. The website, which has been viewed by over 500,000 people, aims to guide a positive cycle of benchmark learning among various industries, inspire enterprises to demonstrate more dynamic goals of sustainable development and determination, and provide investors and the public with a new platform focusing on sustainability, in order to gain an in-depth understanding of the efforts and achievements of Taiwanese enterprises in the ESG field.
The design and launch of the ESG InfoHub are also in line with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), including: SDG 9 (Industry, Innovation and Infrastructure), SDG 12 (Responsible Consumption and Production), SDG 13 (Climate Action), and SDG 17 (Partnership for the Goals). As an innovative financial infrastructure, the ESG InfoHub promotes industry sustainability transformation and ESG information standardization, accelerates corporate transparency, and drives responsible business models and investment decisions. The website also provides greenhouse gas emission data and related resources to encourage companies to actively reduce carbon emissions and develop climate strategies in order to achieve the goal of connecting stakeholders and jointly promoting sustainable development and low-carbon transformation.
Future Prospects
To continuously build a resilient and upgraded ESG ecosystem for the capital market, the TWSE is committed to improving and optimizing the digital ESG information platform in alignment with national sustainable development and net-zero transformation policies, with the hope of providing more valuable value-added services to capital market participants and stakeholders. The short-term improvement direction of the two major platforms, the ESG Digital Platform and the ESG InfoHub, is summarized as follows：
I. ESG Digital Platform
In response to the requirement that all TWSE/TPEx listed companies must prepare their sustainability reports starting in 2025, and to alleviate the burden of sustainability report preparation, the ESG Digital Platform launched the “Auxiliary Function for Sustainability Reports Production” in February 2025, which utilizes sustainability indicators declared by enterprises, with reference to GRI Standards and practical disclosures, to establish a reference framework that assists TWSE/TPEx listed companies in preparing sustainability reports.
This function automatically imports the ESG indicators declared by enterprises before the end of June each year into the report template, enabling enterprises to write their own sustainability information and produce a sustainability report draft based on the major topics they identify in accordance with GRI Standards, while taking into account the contents of the Standards, the draft, and the reference example. In addition to providing a draft for each chapter for the user to understand the better disclosure method, the platform offers essential writing resources for preparing the sustainability report, such as the “GRI Standards,” “Guidelines for Preparing Major Topics in Sustainability Reports,” and “Sample Template for Disclosure of Major Topics in Sustainability Reports,” in order to assist enterprises in improving compliance efficiency and reducing operational costs, and take another important step forward for the digitization of ESG information.
Secondly, in compliance with the “Roadmap for Taiwan listed companies to align with IFRS Sustainability Disclosure Standards” released by the regulatory authority in 2023, the TWSE plans to have IFRS Sustainability Disclosure Standards applied in three stages starting from 2026.To ensure that enterprises can smoothly comply with IFRS Sustainability Disclosure Standards as scheduled, the TWSE has released the “Reference Example for IFRS Standards Import Plan” and established an implementation schedule for the plan, in order to assist enterprises in establishing their own import plans. Furthermore, to assist enterprises in smoothly importing the IFRS Sustainability Disclosure Standards, the ESG Digital Platform, as an integrated platform for sustainability information declaration, has incorporated the function of “Declaration of Import Plan for Integration with IFRS Sustainability Disclosure Standards” into the ESG Digital Platform to enable enterprises to declare their integration progress through a unified path. The TWSE also monitors the import status of various companies online to improve supervisory efficiency and strengthen guidance in a timely manner.
Finally, since enterprise ESG information disclosure is an important infrastructure for sustainable development, enterprises can identify and understand risks through this information. Additionally, the disclosure can provide crucial investment decision-making information for market participants, such as financial institutions and the general public. In the future, the TWSE will continue to comply with the policies of the FSC to incorporate the sustainability indicators of the ESG Digital Platform into the government’s open data platform “High Application Value Topic Dataset,” and achieve daily synchronized updates through digital platform system connection to provide users with API connection and CSV large data download, so as to enhance the application value of Taiwan’s ESG data.
II. ESG InfoHub
In the future, the ESG InfoHub will further screen and produce comparable sustainability indicators in conjunction with the expansion of the sustainability indicator database, and add a dashboard comparison function. In addition, as the Market Highlights aims to provide domestic and international investors the sustainability highlights in Taiwan’s capital market, the TWSE will review and update the Market Highlights in a rolling manner by referring to international sustainability trends and domestic regulatory directions, such as scope 3 greenhouse gas disclosure statistics, to continue promoting the sustainability competitiveness of Taiwan’s capital market to the international stage.
The promotion of sustainability knowledge is another important purpose of establishing the ESG InfoHub. The TWSE also plans to continuously expand its educational resources and incorporate into the ESG InfoHub the resources from the ESG Digital Platform related to report preparation. In addition to public browsing, the TWSE will refer to the latest international sustainability topics (such as preventing greenwashing of sustainability information) to establish an education section and present more complex and serious topics in a simple and understandable manner through text and images, in order to enhance the public’s knowledge of sustainability.
Epilogue
With the increasing emphasis on sustainable development in the global market, Taiwanese companies are demonstrating high operational resilience and competitiveness in the wave of sustainability transformation. From strengthening the requirements for compiling sustainability reports to further enhancing information transparency and credibility, the TWSE continues to optimize its digital platforms and strives to provide accurate, comparable, and valuable ESG information to market participants. The launch and continuous improvement of the “ESG Digital Platform” and “ESG InfoHub” not only promote enterprises’ acceleration in sustainability transformation, but also provide investors with more handy decision support tools to actively showcase new opportunities for Taiwan’s capital market in global market competition.
Looking ahead to the future, the TWSE will take “Driving Changes to Achieve the Vision” as its development vision to promote the digitization of sustainability information, and adhere to the spirit of “Innovation and Sustainability” to work together with stakeholders to continuously promote the twin transformation of the capital market.