Discourses of Sustainability in Corporate Sustainability Reports: A Diachronic Study of European Energy Companies

This dissertation explores how three of the biggest European electricity companies -Enel, E.ON and Iberdrola- have discussed sustainability in their Corporate Sustainability Reports (CSR) over a ten-year period from 2013 to 2023. The research combines quantitative and qualitative methods within a Corpus-Assisted Discourse Studies (CADS) approach to examine emerging themes and linguistic patterns in the Corporate Sustainability Reports of the three companies, selected as representatives of the European energy sector. The analysis focuses on keywords, trends, collocations, and emerging patterns. The main objective of the study is to uncover how environmental issues have been integrated into these companies’ discourse, how the communication with their audiences was managed and how language has evolved in response to changing European sustainability policies and public expectations. The findings reveals shifts in the way sustainability is discussed, with an increasing emphasis on decarbonization and emissions reduction, reflecting the direct link between carbon emissions and the energy industry. The research also highlights the impact of regulatory frameworks, especially European sustainability policies, on CSRs. The corpus-assisted analysis shows a progression from a narrow focus on emissions to a wider and more innovative sustainability agenda that encompasses several aspects of social responsibility. These findings provide valuable insights into how energy companies present their environmental commitments and strategically communicate them to their audiences.