by Tomo Suzuki
Tomo Suzuki’s current research, the “Environmental Liability Project”, proposes to theoretically and empirically explore the ways in which environmental liabilities are calculated in different energy companies in different jurisdictions. The history, logic, theory, politics and consequences of calculations are investigated in Australia, China, India, Japan and the US.
One of the major aspects of this Project is “Accounting for Nuclear Power Plants.” In recent years, there has been serious concern over global warming which is considered to be caused, at least in part, by excessive CO2 emission. In the name of CO2 reduction efforts, we now observe a sharp increase in the number of new nuclear power plants which are considered to produce only a small amount of CO2. While this may have a positive effect on CO2 reduction, at least in the short or medium term, the total costs and environmental liabilities of nuclear waste management (including nuclear power plant decommissioning costs) are simply unknown, let alone the overall impact of nuclear power generation on the environment and socio-economies as a whole.
In addition, environmental liability in general has started to be tightly regulated by FASB and IASB under which more than 100 countries’ listed companies are obliged to calculate what is previously “unknown”. The scope of this environmental liability, of course, goes beyond those of energy or heavily polluting industries. All businesses must recognise, measure, and disclose, for example, the expected costs which are associated with asset disposals such as machines, buildings and land. Some pilot research suggests that the expected costs for land cleaning (i.e., environmental liabilities on the balance sheet), for example, can be beyond ones’ imagination in many countries such as China and India. What we observe here is that, regardless of theoretical possibility or impossibility, businesses have started calculating and reporting their environmental liabilities and this trend will further be strengthened.
Tomo Suzuki has been accumulating detailed cases of calculative practices in both developed and developing countries and it is hoped that such a study would serve as a foundation for the careful assessment of how accounting for sustainability could be developed. In some cases, such as “Accounting for Nuclear Power Plants”, the project has already impacted upon politics and the real operation of business. In order to carefully plan the development of sustainable socio-economies, the issue of Environmental Liability appears one of most high impact and urgent issues upon which academics, managements and politicians should work together.