Climate change from a corporate perspective: a case study of the linguistic representation of the energy transition by the fossil fuel companies Total and Equinor

This paper deals with how the energy transition, required to address climate change, is linguistically represented in a corporate sector with a heavy carbon footprint. So far, little research with a point of departure in linguistics has been undertaken on how companies perceive the changes in business practices required to achieve a sustainable future. We investigate this issue through a quantitative/qualitative case study of recent sustainability disclosure by two large fossil fuel companies, Total and Equinor. Our aim is to show, through a mainly lexico-semantic analysis, how micro level linguistic features contribute to expressing the companies’ perspectives on the transition, including the nature of the transition, their motivation for implementing it and the timeframe they envisage for this process. We find that the energy transition is linguistically represented as an ongoing process rather than a dramatic transformation, that this process is not primarily motivated by climate concerns, but rather by business-related considerations, and, importantly, that the transition to a low-carbon society will take time.