JUNE 11, 2025

Hello!

In this week’s edition of Cipher: 

• Anca Gurzu explores how misinformation is harming Europe’s wind industry.
• A Voices author explains why solar power should have bipartisan support.
• And Anca looks at new numbers showing China investing far more heavily in wind energy than any other country.

Was this email forwarded to you? Sign up here.

Send your energy photos, story tips and more to news@ciphernews.com.

Illustration by Nadya Nickels.

Fake news causes headaches for Europe’s wind industry 

BY: ANCA GURZU

COPENHAGEN, Denmark — Three contestants stood on stage ready for a round of true-or-false questions about wind energy.  
 
Wind turbines cannot be combined with farming — True or false? False.  
 
Most blades end up in landfills after being decommissioned — True.  
 
Wind turbines attract lightning during storms — True.  
 
Wind turbines cause electromagnetic radiation that can make people ill — False. 
 
The contestants weren’t just regular participants. They were wind industry experts from companies and lobby groups — and, surprisingly, even they got some of the answers wrong.

The quiz marked the beginning of a panel debate about wind misinformation at the yearly gathering of European wind energy professionals in Denmark in April.

False narratives around the impact of wind energy on everything from land to health to marine life have morphed in recent years from small-scale opposition aimed at individual projects to globally coordinated campaigns targeting the technology as a whole.

The wind industry says these campaigns are already causing more project appeals and delays; they worry things will only get worse.

“This poses huge real-life problems for Europe’s wind industry,” said Christoph Zipf, communications manager at Wind Europe, the lobby group that organized the gathering in Copenhagen.

“Where these disinformation campaigns are successful, they will almost certainly delay the deployment of wind energy.”

While it is difficult to attribute the fate of a particular project directly to mis- or disinformation, wind projects around Europe (and elsewhere) seem to be facing more and more opposition.

In the Spanish region of Galicia, a storm of legal cases is blocking wind projects. In a non-binding referendum in the Austrian region of Carinthia earlier this year, more than half of the participants voted in favor of banning new wind turbines in the region. In Italy’s Sardinia, the regional government implemented an 18-month ban on new renewables installations amid growing public skepticism. In Germany, the far-right Alternative for Germany (Afd) party has previously campaigned on dismantling all wind power plants.

Communities often have legitimate questions and concerns about new energy infrastructure, and it’s well documented that people don’t want the projects in their backyards. False narratives can legitimize and amplify such concerns.

The bigger challenge comes from social media and more targeted campaigns.

“For some years now, we’ve been facing a wave of professionalized and coordinated disinformation campaigns,” said Zipf. “They often take place online and come in the form of anti-wind blogs, influencers, fake accounts, bot networks or AI-generated content.

The recent rise in mis- and disinformation is largely in sync with wind energy’s visible rise across Europe, with hundreds of turbines now dotting fields and seas.

“Who is truly behind these campaigns is difficult to figure out, but my sense is that there are a series of interlocking actors,” said Carl Miller, co-founder of CASM Technology, a company that uses artificial intelligence to detect and analyze how information is manipulated online to influence behaviors and attitudes.

Miller points to autocratic governments such as Russia. The country’s digital warfare infrastructure has been well documented and NATO last year detailed how Russia is seeking to spread climate disinformation.

Far-right groups have also “taken up green energy as a totemic issue” that they regard as left-wing and elite-driven, Miller said.

Miller added a third potential operative, one with capitalistic motivations. “We shouldn’t write off the possibility that commercial actors are conducting disinformation campaigns against the wind sector,” he said.

Limits on the data fact checkers can scrape from websites like TikTok also make it challenging to get a full view of the problem, said Stephan Mündges, coordinator at the European Fact-Checking Standards Network (EFCSN), which brings together European organizations working to combat misinformation across a variety of topics. “This is a game of scale. If you don’t have data access, you have nothing to match existing claims to.”

Read the full article and share it on Cipher’s website.

Lunchtime Reads and Hot Takes

Solar Bankruptcies Show US Clean Energy Industry Is Teetering on the Brink — Bloomberg
Bill’s take: With few alternatives to replace solar in the next few years, power shortages are becoming more likely.

Westinghouse targets $75bn US nuclear expansion after Donald Trump order — Financial Times (subscription)
Cat’s take: Ten new large reactors could cost $75 billion, before cost overruns and delays, the FT says. Westinghouse wants the ten new reactors included in one of the Executive Orders to all be its AP1000 design.

Britain to invest further 14.2 billion pounds in Sizewell C nuclear project — Reuters
Anca’s take: It would be only the second new nuclear plant built in the UK in more than two decades. The Hinkley Point C, which has had several delays and cost overruns, is expected to start operations in 2029.

Coal and Gas Plants Were Closing. Then Trump Ordered Them to Keep Running — The New York Times
Cat’s take: It was interesting to read how the executive orders were a surprise even to the companies operating the plants and that the costs of continued operations are likely to fall on consumers.

The Senate Takes Its First Pass at IRA Repeal — Heatmap News
Amena’s take: Sen. Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.VA). who chairs the environment committee, has been skeptical of the greenhouse gas fund's "green bank" since last year, calling it ripe for waste, fraud and abuse.

Americans’ Views on Energy at the Start of Trump’s Second Term — Pew Research Center
Cat’s take: During the same period, Americans have become more supportive of nuclear energy. A higher percentage of Republicans support nuclear than Democrats, but the increase in support is clearly bipartisan.

AI’s Need for Power Spurs Return of Dirty Gas Turbines — Bloomberg
Bill’s take: Cash-laden tech companies are racing to get their hands on electricity as fast as possible and are willing to put their decarbonization goals on the back burner for now to do it.

Automakers Race to Find Workaround to China’s Stranglehold on Rare-Earth Magnets — The Wall Street Journal
Bill’s take: The Trump administration’s tariffs, intended to move manufacturing from China to the U.S., could backfire.

More of what we're reading:

• Chinese battery glut plugs into solar boom to power Pakistan — Financial Times (subscription)
• With steel tariffs doubling today, a North Carolina manufacturer wonders how to compete — NPR
  
  

We denote ‘(subscription)’ when publications don’t provide any complimentary articles, but many others may ultimately allow you to read only a limited number each month before subscribing. We encourage those who can afford it to support the journalism you love most!

Solar energy is beyond politics

Illustration by Nadya Nickels.

BY: JD DILLON

JD Dillon is chief marketing and customer experience officer at Tigo Energy. You can reach him at tigoenergy@technica.inc.

Recent debates have cast support for solar energy as a partisan issue. But the benefits of solar don’t belong to one political party. They belong to homeowners looking to lower their energy bills, businesses seeking resilient power solutions and communities creating local jobs.

I’ve seen this firsthand throughout my career in the solar industry. Whether I was working with policymakers, business leaders or homeowners, the motivations for adopting solar varied — and transcended party lines.

In 2019, I successfully worked with two organizations that had diametrically opposed political backgrounds. One was an Oakland, California-based nonprofit that rose to prominence as a “Green for All Climate Champion.” The other was an ecological restoration and conservation project in Central Texas developed by the founder of Church’s Chicken. My company at the time donated solar equipment to both.

While touring the Texas project, I noted that California’s solar growth was fueled by climate-focused nonprofits and policy support, unlike in Texas, where few such policies exist. A board member replied, “Honey, that’s how we like it. The good Lord gave us this planet, and it’s our job to take care of it.”

Despite their vastly different perspectives, both organizations embraced solar for the same fundamental reason: it works.
It’s time to move past partisanship and recognize the universal benefits of clean energy.

Read this article and share it on Cipher’s website.

On wind power, China blows past rest of world

Source: Global Wind Energy Council: Global Wind Auction Database and Status & Market Trends Report • Data looks at how much wind power capacity countries awarded for new projects in the first three months of 2025.

BY: ANCA GURZU

You could call it a blowout.

China greenlit far more wind energy projects in the first three months of this year than any other country, according to data from the Global Wind Energy Council.

Almost 40 gigawatts-worth of projects were approved globally in the first quarter of 2025 in competitive bidding processes, through which energy companies can bid for the right to build and operate wind power projects, often on government-allocated land or offshore areas.

More than three-quarters of all new wind capacity approved for development globally between January and March of this year were approved in China. Germany and India were next with much lower shares: 10% and 8% respectively.

The United States did not rank in the top seven leading markets for new wind project awards. U.S. President Donald Trump has made his disdain for the wind sector clear and temporarily halted federal permitting of new wind projects when he took office in January.

The goal of allocating wind-power developments through auctions, which can look different depending on the country, is to encourage market competition that could drive down electricity prices.

China has been dominant across the clean energy space for years, and it has installed more wind and solar capacity than any other country. Last year, it broke its own records for new renewables installations, reaching a total of 520 gigawatts (GW) of installed wind power capacity and 887 GW of solar power capacity.

AND FINALLY...
Monkey power

I snapped this photo of monkeys walking on a powerline while on a recent vacation to Costa Rica. Look closely and you can see a baby on one of the monkey's chest. I loved seeing (and hearing!) the howler monkeys that populate this region of the country along the Pacific Ocean in the surfer town of Nosara. But I also found it tragic to hear they often get electrocuted if they touch certain parts of the infrastructure. The trend, which is growing due to increased development, has led to a push for better measures to protect the monkeys.

Each week, we feature a photo that is somehow related to energy, the thing we all need but don’t notice until it’s expensive or gone. Email your ideas and photos to news@ciphernews.com.

Editor’s note: In addition to supporting Cipher, Breakthrough Energy also supports and partners with a range of entities working to tackle climate change, including nonprofits, corporations, startups and research firms. For more information on Cipher’s editorial policy, click here.