P21 - Public Communication on the Energy Transition - NLP Approach
- Event
- iCCC2026 - iCampus Cottbus Conference
2026-05-05 - 2026-05-07
Cottbus - Band
- Poster
- Chapter
- Energiewirtschaft
- Author(s)
- M. Petrosjan, D. Korrapati, C. Hoffmann, F. Müsgens - BTU Cottbus-Senftenberg, Cottbus
- Pages
- 202 - 207
- DOI
- 10.5162/iCCC2026/P21
- ISBN
- 978-3-910600-10-2
- Price
- free
Abstract
Global mitigation targets as defined by the Paris Agreement can only be achieved through a fast and efficient energy transition. Pace and efficiency of the energy transition are strongly determined by its public acceptance. However, as the climate crisis itself, as well as one of its main driving solutions - the energy transition- is a complex, transformative, and politically diverse topic, communication about it is at risk of knowledge gaps, misinformation, and emotional polarization. Individual preferences are likely influenced and updated by any additional information received. Consequently, neutral and informative communication about the energy transition is becoming increasingly important, particularly in fostering public acceptance. We apply natural language processing (NLP) techniques to analyse public communication on the energy transition, focusing on sentiment analysis of transcripts from Germany’s most-watched news program, Tagesschau. We address the challenge of efficiently detecting tone and emotion in this domain-specific context by offering a finetuned model that enables sentiment classification of texts related to the energy transition.