The POWER project (Prevention Of Weaponization and Enhancing Resilience against security-related disinformation on clean energy) successfully conducted its first Task Force activities during April and May 2025, marking a significant milestone in the project’s research phase.
Task Force 1 brought together clean energy experts, industry representatives, academics, researchers, and policymakers to identify and analyse the main disinformation narratives affecting clean energy adoption in Spain.
Key Activities
The Task Force focused on eleven clean energy technologies: solar energy, wind energy, hydro energy, geothermal energy, biomass energy, smart grids, batteries, energy efficiency, electric vehicles, green hydrogen, and nuclear energy.
Through online focus group sessions, experts examined public perception of clean energy and evaluated which technologies are best suited to the country’s geographic and economic context. Discussions were particularly timely, as they took place in the context of recent energy events that became focal points for misinformation campaigns.
Initial Findings
The monitoring and analysis conducted during this period identified eight major disinformation narrative drivers circulating in Spanish social and news media:
- Deliberate environmental destruction (e.g., claims that wind turbines cause fires or solar fields produce ecocide)
- Negative impact on wildlife (e.g., assertions that wind turbines kill birds or marine animals)
- Pollution, toxicity & health risks (e.g., narratives that batteries are poison or that “green energy radiation” causes cancer)
- Technical unreliability (e.g., renewable energy is unstable, intermittent, or responsible for blackouts)
- Conspiracy / Global elites (e.g., Agenda 2030 as a “green dictatorship” imposed by elites)
- Antimodernism / Eco-traditionalism (e.g., calls to return to an “age of stone” or claims that “green energy impoverishes us”)
- Greenwashing / Green hypocrisy (e.g., accusations of “eco-scam” or “eco-washing” by companies and governments)
- Geopolitical distraction / Smoke screen (e.g., claims that green energy is a cover for foreign or political agendas)
Experts also identified legitimate technical, environmental, and economic challenges in clean energy sources that have been weaponized in disinformation campaigns, and discussed effective counter-disinformation strategies for the Spanish context.
Next Steps
The insights gathered from Task Force 1 will feed into the development of a comprehensive multilingual lexicon of clean energy concepts and security terminology in Spanish, English, Romanian, and Russian. These findings will also inform the upcoming Task Force 2, which will validate and refine the clean energy lexicon consolidated through systematic literature review.
The POWER project is funded by the European Union’s Erasmus+ programme and involves partners from Spain, Malta, Romania, and Moldova working together to strengthen societal resilience against disinformation targeting clean energy and the energy transition.
The POWER project aims to facilitate the transition to clean energy by fostering informed, fact-based public discussion on clean energy sources while strengthening societal resilience against the weaponization of clean energy conversations by disinformation actors.