Spotlight’s TV report on renewables and EVs collapses under basic fact-checking, highlighting how misinformation is shaping Australia’s energy debate.

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.

As  Anne Delaney wrote last month, multiple submissions detailed coordinated “astroturfing” campaigns, including fake social media accounts impersonating real Australians to manufacture opposition to renewable energy projects, alongside widespread use of misleading political advertising.

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.

Disturbingly, such campaigns have also become a feature of some mainstream media, and it seems our major TV networks are no exception.

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.

It fell over at the very first fact-check. “Every battery, every electric vehicle, every piece of so-called clean energy technology today” uses cobalt, reporter Liam Bartlett claimed at the start of the program.

Nearly every big battery installed in Australia these days uses (LFP) lithium iron phosphate chemistry, which means no cobalt, and no nickel (that’s relevant because Bartlett did a similar hit job on the nickel industry last year, using that as a platform to attack EVs and renewables).

Tesla, the biggest supplier to big batteries in Australia, now uses only LFP batteries for grid scale batteries. No cobalt. The two........

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