Moral foundations of energy transitions in the United States: A cross-sector discourse analysis

Abstract

Morality, people's evaluative judgments of right and wrong, can help explain and motivate their policy support and actions. Given the critical need to overcome ideological differences and facilitate stakeholder buy-in for energy transitions, we explore variations in moral values within and across three key stakeholders in the U.S.: the government, energy companies, and the mass media. Specifically, we leverage insights from the Moral Foundations Theory and employ computational text analysis to examine a vast dataset comprising national congressional proceedings, firm Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filings, and newspaper articles from selected news outlets over the last decade. Our results show a growing focus on energy transitions in recent years, underscoring its increasing importance on the public policy agenda. Notably, our analysis reveals a significant disparity in moral framing between newspapers and SEC filings: while newspapers tend to emphasize binding moral foundations and convey a negative tone, SEC filings are more inclined to employ individualizing moral foundations and express a relatively positive sentiment. This disparity highlights the potential tension between the general public's moral concerns and the priorities of energy companies amidst the ongoing energy transition, providing important implications for policy design and the pursuit of a just transition.