Plans for a community battery in Narrabri had been going well – there was a $500,000 federal government grant, the shire council had agreed on a site and it had the necessary approvals to start building.

The battery project – in a council car park – was proposed by local not-for-profit Geni.Energy, with the idea to soak up solar energy during the day for use later.

But then came the community Facebook pages.

“They are the castle of propagandised misinformation,” said Sally Hunter, a founder of Geni.Energy during a Senate inquiry into climate and energy misinformation this week.

Claims the battery was a fire risk and would “shut down the town for days” made their way to local councillors, Hunter said, who in April voted to rescind an agreement, leaving the project in limbo.

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The story was just one heard during three days of public hearings for the inquiry at the same time as the Liberal party was deciding to withdraw its backing for net zero greenhouse gas targets.

Groups opposing renewable energy, renewables industry representatives looking to build projects, climate advocates, thinktank operatives and News Corp media executives all appeared – the full suite of actors trying to win arguments locally and nationally about the merits or otherwise of a shift away from fossil fuels.

Raising hostilities

Mis- and disinformation was dividing communities and drowning out legitimate concerns and supportive voices, the inquiry heard.

“We find people who have valid concerns about specific projects get subsumed and are used to weaponise a wider ideological frame,” said Dave Sweeney, a policy analyst and nuclear campaigner at the Australian Conservation Foundation.

There were stories of a windfarm worker being man-handled and threatened in the street and a farmer’s daughter who was accosted outside a pub for her father’s support for wind turbines on his land.

A member of a group opposing an offshore wind project in central NSW said he had maggot-infested dead rats left on his driveway.

“It is hard to overstate just how dangerous mis- and disinformation is,” said Ika Trijsburg, the director of urban analytics at the Institute for Infrastructure in Society at ANU who gave evidence at the inquiry.

“Misinformation around climate does make people increasingly polarised in their decision making and makes their stances uncivil. It can drive a sense of being overwhelmed and a disengagement and this hostility that we see in local communities.”

Trijsburg is also head of democracy and diplomacy at the Municipal Association of Victoria (MAV), a group that represents all 79 councils in the state.

In evidence, MAV said councils were dealing with misinformation on the supposed health impacts of wind turbines, on nonexistent deals between five councils and a transmission line project, and claimed risks of fires from electric vehicles.

‘He had a vision’

While the inquiry was hearing evidence, in Canberra the Liberal party followed the Nationals and abandoned a target to reach net zero greenhouse gas emissions.

The perception of widespread opposition in the regions to renewable energy and the notion – despite evidence to the contrary – that electricity bills are going up because of net zero targets, has been grist to the anti-renewables mill that has been turning in the Coalition ranks for years.

One of the chief agitators against net zero targets has been Barnaby Joyce, the New England MP who left the Nationals frontbench last month.

The inquiry heard from Grant Piper, a farmer from central NSW who chairs the National Rational Energy Network (NREN) – a group launched in 2023 to connect groups opposed to renewables projects around the country. According to Piper, there are about 160 of them.

The group’s first zoom meeting in 2023 was hosted by Joyce’s office, Piper told the inquiry. “He had a vision for a group,” he said of Joyce’s involvement.

NREN would go on to host a “Reckless Renewables” rally in Canberra last year and seconded one of its members, Sandra Bourke, to be a spokesperson for Advance Australia – a well-funded rightwing activist group that has also been campaigning against net zero targets.

Joyce had no formal role in NREN, Piper said, but they did speak regularly.

Last week, the Institute of Public Affairs claimed in an email to its followers that abandonment of the net zero target by the Nationals – to be followed days later by the Liberals – “would not have happened without the work of the IPA”.

At the inquiry, the rightwing institute – known for promoting climate science denial and opposing renewables – said it had visited more than 60 regional communities as part of its campaign.

When asked about its funders, the IPA said it wasn’t required to disclose its donors.

The institute wouldn’t confirm if the billionaire and vocal opponent of net zero policies, Gina Rinehart, was still a major funder (court proceedings in 2018 revealed Rinehart’s Hancock Prospecting had provided between one-third and a half of all the institute’s revenue in 2016 and 2017).

Nor would it confirm a media report suggesting a coal industry boss had coordinated funding for their work on energy.

A global challenge

The problems of dealing with mis- and disinformation are not unique to Australia. This week an initiative was launched at UN climate talks in Brazil backed by 10 countries to tackle mis- and disinformation.

“As the Nobel Peace prize laureate Maria Ressa said, information integrity is the mother of all battles,” said Trijsburg.

“Once disinformation is created it is very hard to put it back in the box. It is expensive to debunk and it is hard to regenerate trust once a community has had false information shared with them.”

“This is a rapidly developing critical crisis we are finding ourselves in. If we lose this battle then we lose them all.”