Zero Carbon Academy’s News Tracker Shows Key Net Zero Trends and Conversations as it Analyses Online News

The ZCA news tracker

Since its inception on the 3^rd of June 2021, the ZCA news tracker has analysed over 15,000 articles; in just the last week, it has examined 225 articles. The tracker separates articles based on their content and generates a value for the sentiment of the piece. Text Analytics create a sentiment score between -1 and 1 using a machine learning classification method. Scores closer to 1 show good sentiment, while those closer to -1 show negative sentiment. A vast body of text containing sentiment associations is used to pre-train the model. The model combines a number of text-analysis methods, such as part-of-speech analysis, word placement, and word associations.[i] The tracker also automatically identifies entities and topics based on the inputs, as well as pulling out key terms from the articles themselves.

Source: ZCA

The news tracker is available to ZCA community members and can be found here.

Insights from the tracker

Energy

In the past few months, energy has dominated the net zero space in the context of the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the ensuing energy price rises, as well as its link to the UK cost of living crisis. According to YouGov, in the UK, 69% of people place the economy in their top 3 biggest issues (the highest of any issue), which shows how the cost-of-living crisis and its intrinsic link to energy prices are at the forefront of the minds of many.[ii] Unsurprisingly, especially with the importance of energy generation in the zero carbon sphere, energy also dominates the news tracker, accounting for over 2/3^rds of the total gathered articles. Due to this, at ZCA, we know that it is a category that cannot be ignored. Below is a list of the latest insights from ZCA that cover energy topics, from the invasion of Ukraine to innovative blockchain technology for personal power generation.

Finance

McKinsey has suggested that to reach net zero on the timeline set by the Paris agreement, annual spending on physical assets will need to increase by $3.5 trillion dollars to $9.2 trillion.[iii] It is therefore vital that finance remains a part of the conversation surrounding net zero and the news tracker has collected and analysed 2512 articles since its origin. The tracker has divided the gathered articles into five subcategories: accounting and auditing; bank; financial news; grants, scholarships and financial aid; investing. Of these categories, “accounting and auditing” have the highest average sentiment at 0.61; on the other hand, “bank” has the lowest sentiment score at 0.07. ZCA has aimed to cut through the noise surrounding finance and eliminate bias to understand the vast range of sentiments that can be found within associated reports. The latest insights cover topics from ethical investment in Africa to the rise in green bonds.

Automotives and vehicles

When you begin a discussion about net zero and low carbon technologies, there are very few for whom thoughts of motoring and electric vehicles are not front of mind. The ONS reports that only 29% of respondents describe themselves as unlikely to switch to an electric vehicle in the next ten years; despite this, 70% said that the cost would stop them, and 52% said that the lack of infrastructure was putting them off.[iv] There is support for a shift to electric vehicles, but widespread fear of cost and infrastructure issues may explain why sentiment for articles that discuss electric vehicles are finely poised at 0.49, fairly positive but still behind where we would imagine sentiment to fall, given the 71% that say they will switch in the next ten years. There may be an appetite for switching to electric vehicles, but solutions are necessary to ensure successful implementation. The latest insights from ZCA discuss the current state of infrastructure and how businesses can employ electric vehicles.

Filling in the gaps

The news tracker has also shown us that in the subcategories for business, some industries remain underrepresented in online articles. The news tracker has identified just two articles that talk about net zero in the realm of the hospitality and textile industries. This shows us here at ZCA that more support and information are needed in these areas. As such, the development of new badges for content that relates to these two areas can be more easily identified by our users as we continue to grow our catalogue.