Under the backdrop of the global"dual carbon" strategy's in-depth advancement and increasingly strict international green trade barriers, the battery industry, a core pillar of the new energy sector, is confronted with the dual pressures of continuously strengthened external environmental regulations and intensifying internal homogenization competition. Chinese battery enterprises generally exhibit typical characteristics of high energy consumption, high environmental sensitivity, and high resource dependence. How to transform external ESG compliance pressure into internal green innovation impetus has become a key issue for the battery industry to achieve high-quality transformation and sustainable development, and is also an important research direction for Chinese enterprises to break through international green barriers and enhance their global core competitiveness.
This thesis takes the global leading battery enterprise, CATL, as the core research case. Based on the theories of signal transmission, stakeholder, and resource-based view, it systematically sorts out and deeply explains the internal influence mechanism of ESG performance on green innovation performance. Through a comprehensive analysis of CATL's specific practical measures in the three dimensions of environment, society, and corporate governance, combined with the ESG rating results and dynamic changes of two authoritative institutions, MSCI and Huazheng, it comprehensively evaluates its ESG performance level and development achievements. At the same time, starting from the three levels of macro policy orientation, meso-industry competition, and micro-enterprise development needs, it deeply analyzes the internal driving forces for enterprises to actively carry out ESG practices, further reveals the four core transmission paths through which ESG performance affects green innovation performance, and conducts a detailed analysis of the specific impact effects of green innovation performance under different paths.
The research finds that enterprises actively conform to the global green development trend, proactively transform external environmental regulations and market demands into internal green innovation impetus, and comprehensively implement ESG concepts and practical measures, which can have a positive promoting effect on green innovation performance. The ESG performance of enterprises mainly affects green innovation performance through four paths: financing drive, R&D capability construction, operation optimization, and legitimacy acquisition. From the perspective of micro-mechanism, the four paths respectively reduce financing costs, ensure the supply of innovative human resources, improve the efficiency of resource allocation, and strengthen external legitimacy support. Relying on the complete transformation process of "technological research and development breakthrough - green technology application and implementation - compliance of innovation achievements", they ultimately jointly act on the coordinated improvement of enterprise innovation benefits, ecological benefits, and social benefits, effectively promoting the continuous improvement of green innovation performance. This thesis, through in-depth analysis of CATL's practical cases, reveals the internal synergy between ESG governance and green innovation in the battery industry, further enriches the micro-case research results in the field of ESG and green innovation, and makes up for the lack of targeted research in the new energy battery sub-sector. Based on the research conclusions, it proposes targeted improvement suggestions from two dimensions: internal management optimization of enterprises and self-discipline and standardization construction of industry associations, in order to provide practical references and decision-making support for Chinese new energy battery enterprises to scientifically promote ESG practices, effectively respond to international green regulation challenges, and continuously enhance green innovation capabilities.