Spotlight\u2019s TV report on renewables and EVs collapses under basic fact-checking, highlighting how misinformation is shaping Australia\u2019s energy debate.<\/p>\n
The recent Senate inquiry into climate and energy misinformation and disinformation unveiled some shocking evidence about the nature of attacks against climate science, renewable energy, EVs and other green technologies.<\/p>\n
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Anne Delaney wrote last month,\u00a0<\/a>multiple submissions detailed coordinated \u201castroturfing\u201d campaigns, including fake social media accounts impersonating real Australians to manufacture opposition to renewable energy projects, alongside widespread use of misleading political advertising.<\/p>\n Experts told the inquiry that digital platforms are amplifying false and distorted claims through opaque algorithms, while the rapid rise of artificial intelligence is accelerating an explosion of deceptive content.<\/p>\n Disturbingly, such campaigns have also become a feature of some mainstream media, and it seems our major TV networks are no exception.<\/p>\n Spotlight, the so-called flagship current affairs program on the 7 network, dedicated more than an hour on Sunday evening on a report into the supply chains feeding into the renewables and EV industries, with a particular focus on cobalt mines in the Congo, and also activities in Australia. It was amplified on Murdoch and social media.<\/p>\n It fell over at the very first fact-check. \u201cEvery battery, every electric vehicle, every piece of so-called clean energy technology today\u201d uses cobalt, reporter Liam Bartlett claimed at the start of the program.<\/p>\n Wrong.<\/p>\n Nearly every big battery installed in Australia these days uses (LFP) lithium iron phosphate chemistry, which means no cobalt, and no nickel (that\u2019s relevant because Bartlett did a similar hit job on the nickel industry last year, using that as a platform to attack EVs and renewables).<\/p>\n Tesla, the biggest supplier to big batteries in Australia, now uses only LFP batteries for grid scale batteries. No cobalt. The two big batteries at Liddell and Tomago being built for AGL Energy by Fluence are LFP. No cobalt. A spokesperson for Fluence said all its batteries in Australia use LFP. \u201cWe don\u2019t use cobalt.\u201d<\/p>\n Finland-based Wartsila, which is building the country\u2019s biggest grid battery at Eraring for Origin Energy, also uses only LFP for its battery projects in Australia. No cobalt.<\/p>\n It\u2019s a similar story with EVs. Tesla, for instance, uses only LFP chemistry for most of the variants of its best selling Model Y and the Model 3. No cobalt. It uses NMC chemistry (which does include cobalt) only in \u201cperformance\u201d variants, which amounts to about 10 per cent of sales.<\/p>\n Home batteries, which are now being installed at record rates in Australia, are the same. New market leader Sigenergy uses only LFP chemistry, so no cobalt, as does another market leader Sungrow, and most others.<\/p>\n Bartlett claims to be appalled by the conditions in some cobalt mines in the Congo, and the nickel mine in Indonesia. And so he should be. So should everyone.<\/p>\n But the inconvenient truth is that these mines have been operating for decades, and cobalt has been used widely in many industries.<\/p>\n The mineral is essential for the iPhone that Bartlett presumably uses, for the laptop he writes his stories on, for the jet engines that flew him from Australia to Africa, and for widespread use in medicine (hip and knee replacements), the petroleum industry, the manufacture of tools, for construction, for cosmetics, and even ceramics.<\/p>\n The use of cobalt in EV and grid batteries is relatively new, and is already moving on. Where it is used, most EV makers are at pains to point out that the mineral does not come from such mines, and they produce blockchain style tracking reports to underline their claims.<\/p>\n But Bartlett did not seem particularly interested in balance, or inconvenient detail. His story had three major themes \u2013 he doesn\u2019t like the Chinese, he doesn\u2019t like renewables and EVs, and he doesn\u2019t like federal Energy and Climate Minister Chris Bowen.<\/p>\n \u201cBowen\u2019s fanatical approach, aided and abetted by a conga line of true believers and latte-sipping Teal supporters is now set to send the country into bankruptcy,\u201d Bartlett wrote in an op-ed also published on 7\u2019s website.<\/p>\n He appeared to have former Greens leader Bob Brown on his side when discussing the Rosebery zinc, copper and lead mine in Tasmania, which had been seeking approval to pipe waste across the Pieman River into a new tailings dam they wanted to build in the Tarkine (also known as Takayna).<\/p>\n Brown and his eponymous foundation have been leading calls to have the Tarkine declared a national park, and given World Heritage status, such is the value of its ancient forests and fauna. Brown has been appalled by the incursions already made by the mining industry into the area.<\/p>\n The problem is that Rosebery has been operating for nearly a century (it was opened in 1936), long before renewables and EVs were a thing. And the good news is that \u2013 since the interview with Brown in front of a giant Myrtle tree in the Tarkine forest \u2013 the mine owner MMG has changed its plans.<\/p>\n It now proposes a new tailings dam on its side of the Pieman River, out of the Tarkine wilderness area. It was a massive victory for the Bob Brown Foundation, whose blockades of\u00a0MMG\u00a0machinery drew more than 2,000 forest defenders and led to more than 100 arrests since 2021.<\/p>\n The change was\u00a0<\/p>\n