Скачать или смотреть DN Group Seminar Discourse and Sustainability Seminar Matteo Fuoli 20 Feb 2026

Matteo Fuoli (University of Birmingham), The language of net zero: A corpus-assisted analysis of corporate climate pledges

Many global corporations have responded to growing pressure to tackle climate change by pledging to achieve “net-zero” emissions. In this talk, I present a corpus-assisted discourse analysis of Fortune Global 500 companies’ sustainability disclosures. We carry out frequency, collocate, and concordance analyses to examine how these companies communicate their net-zero commitments and what kinds of solutions they propose to achieve this goal. Our findings echo media observations that net zero has quickly become a central theme in corporate communication. At the same time, companies often present net zero as a journey or an ambition, with more emphasis on announcing targets than on detailing concrete actions to cut emissions. Overall, these findings challenge the credibility of corporate net-zero commitments.