Study finds major public knowledge gaps on renewables – and they’re being filled with misinformation

Australians are more likely to have solar panels on their rooftop than a pool in their back yard, but many still don’t realise just how common renewable energy is, or how much of the power mix wind and solar already supply, thanks to persistent misinformation campaigns.

A Climate Council study has found that a rise in anti-renewables media reporting and political campaigning – a relatively recent phenomenon in the context of just how long renewable energy has been operating in Australia – is causing people to think the country is much further behind than it is.

The study shows that Australians underestimate the level of popular support for renewables in their country, as well as how far the transition away from fossil fuels has come. 

The findings are not a complete revelation – Renew Economy has reported on at least four such polls or reports in the last 12 months: here, here, here and here. But the message the Climate Council hopes to convey is that the ongoing spread of renewable misinformation is taking a toll. 

“Those that support the continuation of fossil fuel industries are pushing the idea that renewables have negative consequences,” Climate Council councillor Nikki Hutley tells Renew Economy.

“But the way this has been reported in the media plays up the negatives rather than saying everyone’s really happy that we have renewables.

“People don’t necessarily know how far along we’ve come and how long we’ve been doing it for, and getting more information about what we actually have done rather than focusing on the difficulties on the journey might help to garner more support.”

Hutley says most of the opposition in regional areas in particular is “artificially manufactured” in the competition for votes, both in those regions and among people who don’t realise that the journey away from coal power dependence isn’t as difficult as it’s being made out to be.

“We have had solar and wind in the regions for decades, but we haven’t had this level of coverage and contentiousness until quite recently,” she says.

The lack of knowledge is a political vulnerability for those Australians who do want more renewable energy, Hutley believes.

By not knowing how far Australia has come in its clean energy transition, and being persuaded that renewables are too difficult and costly, those same people are being led towards a fictional nuclear future as a kind of panacea – without understanding the huge costs, timelines, and energy insecurity this would entail.

Misinformation thrives in knowledge gaps

Hutley and the Climate Council report lay a chunk of the blame for the collective ignorance about the clean energy transition on the way it is represented in the mainstream media, which focuses on problems with, and opposition to, renewables.

They say this at least partly to blame for Australians underestimating how much support there is for projects in their communities.

Just over two-thirds of Australians are worried about climate change and receptive to the idea of a renewable energy project in their community – but they don’t realise their neighbours are as well, according to the Essential Data poll behind the report. 

The poll was taken at the end of 2024 and shows only one-third of Australians think the country is doing better at building big solar, wind and batteries than the rest of the world, when in fact it’s a global leader. 

Australians also don’t realise – or have forgotten – that the country has been using wind power since the 1980s and hydro power since 1974, when the original Snowy Hydro project was commissioned.

Only 8 per cent of Australians understand how much land will be needed to increase the country’s energy generation by 20 times. Most overestimate the land cost of renewables, which is a knowledge gap that anti-renewables campaigners have become adept at leveraging.

The Climate Council report says all of Australia’s power needs can be met by building on 1200 square kilometres of land, or 120,000 hectares. 

The survey found even less awareness about dual land use options for renewable energy projects, such as running sheep under solar panels or even converting the land to conservation use, an option that is becoming more popular in the UK and being practiced at some solar farms in the US. 

An astonishing 43 per cent of Australians are not aware of any renewable energy projects in their area or state. They don’t realise home batteries are already in a quarter of a million homes and that there are 36 big batteries operating and making significant changes to the way the energy sector works. 

Less surprisingly, few are aware of when the nation’s last remaining coal fired power plants will finally be switched off – the Australia’s Energy Market Operator’s (AEMO) expectation is for 2038 to be the end of coal power – and half underestimate how much electricity will come from renewables by 2030, when the federal target is 82 per cent.  

Worryingly, slightly more than a sixth of Australians still believe gas is a renewable resource and 12 per cent think coal is renewable.

Leveraging the information gap

Misinformation is thriving in the gap “between perception and reality,” the report notes, but regulators and watchdogs might be catching up with some of the more obvious and egregious examples.

Misleading doublespeak around environmental claims is being targeted by regulators, from competition cop ACCC going on the attack against greenwashing in 2023 to corporate regulator ASIC, which is currently pursuing Vanguard Investments through the courts for breaking consumer laws with misleading claims.

And this action has even filtered down to the industry-owned advertising watchdog, Ad Standards, which late in 2024 released a new code against greenwashing.

The code says environmental claims must be evidence-based, reasonable, and true.

It means that once-innocuous claims such as in a recent Hancock Prospecting ad saying it makes “clean gas”, are now coming under fire for being misleading and false. Ad Standards says it is currently investigating that ad, which ran in The Australian.