Collaborative Research: Corporate Net Zero Goals for Decarbonization

为了减缓气候变化，越来越多的政府、企业和其他机构联合采取了“净零”目标，并致力于脱碳。脱碳是一种能源转型过程，即以低碳燃料替代高碳燃料。这个项目研究了三个相互关联的问题：为什么有些公司传达了他们采用不同类型的净零目标，而其他公司却没有？哪些活动与净零目标有关？净零沟通和活动对公司财务业绩和媒体报道的影响是什么？该项目通过探索影响企业参与清洁能源市场发展的因素，使社会受益。该项目构建了三个数据集。首先，企业脱碳沟通数据集包括2015-2024年期间美国财富1000强企业与净零排放和气候变化减缓目标相关的所有企业沟通。研究人员通过搜索公司的网站和年度报告，并对公司关于减缓气候变化的一般性声明和具体净零目标的沟通进行编码，来收集这些数据。其次，研究人员通过对企业脱碳通信数据集进行文本分析和从第三方收集信息来收集企业脱碳活动的数据。第三，企业脱碳媒体报道数据集来自2015-2024年期间提到气候变化和净零排放的主要报纸的所有文章。研究人员提取与这些公司相关的所有气候和环境相关的主要新闻文章的全文，并对这些文章进行过滤、清理和编码。然后将这些指标转换为年度指标，并使用基于面板的统计方法进行分析。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

To mitigate climate change, a growing coalition of governments, businesses, and other institutions have adopted “net zero” goals and engaged in decarbonization, an energy transition process that results from the replacement of fuels with high carbon content by those with low carbon content. This project examines three interrelated questions: Why are some companies communicating their adoption of different types of net zero goals while others are not? What activities are associated with net zero goals? What are the outcomes of net zero communication and activities on firms’ financial performance and media coverage? This project benefits society by exploring the factors that shape businesses’ involvement in the development of the market for clean energy.The project constructs three datasets. First, a corporate decarbonization communication dataset includes all corporate communications related to net zero and climate change mitigation goals for U.S. Fortune 1000 companies during the 2015-2024 period. Researchers collect these data by searching firms’ websites and annual reports and coding corporate communication of general climate change mitigation statements and specific net zero goals. Second, investigators collect data on corporate decarbonization activities by applying text analysis to the corporate decarbonization communication dataset and by collecting information from third parties. Third, a corporate decarbonization media coverage dataset draws from all articles from major newspapers that mention climate change and net zero during the 2015-2024 period. Researchers extract the full text of all climate and environment-related major news articles associated with each of these firms, and filter, clean, and code these articles. These are then converted into annual indicators and analyzed using panel-based statistical methods.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.