How To Flip Marketing That Promotes A False “Future Of Energy” Vision

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Last Updated on: 9th March 2025, 02:18 pm

To avoid the worst impacts of climate change, emissions need to be reduced by almost half by 2030 and to reach net zero by 2050. The future of energy must focus on renewables. A clean energy transition is powerful and necessary to stabilize the planet, and strong leadership to promote an emission-free future for energy is imperative.

It will take savvy clean energy messaging to refute social media resistance as it bombards us with climate and clean energy disinformation. Yet it’s difficult to discern which messaging works incrementally and methodically to influence public opinion. While differences of opinion continue among climate activists, wealthy fossil fuel companies are pouring tens of millions of dollars into native advertisements that are designed to be deceptive and dangerous.

We should be concerned.

A large segment of the greenhouse gases that blanket the Earth and trap the sun’s heat are generated through energy production by burning fossil fuels to generate electricity and heat. The UN describes the planet’s plight succinctly.

• Fossil fuels, such as coal, oil and gas, are by far the largest contributor to global climate change, accounting for over 75% of global greenhouse gas emissions and nearly 90% of all carbon dioxide emissions.
• To achieve this, we need to end our reliance on fossil fuels and invest in alternative sources of energy that are clean, accessible, affordable, sustainable, and reliable.
• Renewable energy sources — which are available in abundance all around us, provided by the sun, wind, water, waste, and heat from the Earth — are replenished by nature and emit little to no greenhouse gases or pollutants into the air.
• Fossil fuels still account for more than 80% of global energy production.
• Cleaner sources of energy are gaining ground: about 29% of electricity currently comes from renewable sources.

But aren’t Big Oil companies pledging to reduce emissions and transition to renewable? Not so much.

Murray Auchincloss, BP’s CEO, last week pledged to “fundamentally reset” the company’s strategy, increasing spending on oil and gas nearly 20% to $10 billion a year. At the same time, BP has decided to reduce previous expansion goals in clean energy, biofuels, and batteries. “They’ve chosen to take a backseat rather than a leadership position,” Shu Ling Liauw, CEO of Accela Research Ltd., told Bloomberg. “The integrated energy company concept is off the table.”

Exxon chair and chief executive Darren Woods now suggests that creating an international system for measuring the carbon intensity of different products — everything from fuel and fodder to steel and cement — would be a better approach than, say, carbon pricing. Of course, there are no agreed upon metrics to measure product carbon intensity.

The US federal government has taken up the mantle that the future of energy means heavier reliance on fossil fuels. In fact, Energy Secretary Wright said this week that climate change was a “real, physical phenomenon,” but it wouldn’t make a list of his top 10 problems facing the world. For example, wouldn’t it be cheaper to provide power more quickly to more people around the world with solar mini-grids? Instead, the Trump administration is disappearing words that promote clean energy.

Alarmingly, news articles that may offer a tad of evidence about renewable energy sources are being censored by the Trump administration. Last week, employees at the Social Security Administration (SSA) were informed that new rules forbid them from accessing “general news” websites, including those that have been at the forefront of the reporting on Elon Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) effort. Wired received a copy of the email addressed to “all SSA employees” from a mailing list called “internal communications.” The sources confirmed that the websites of The Washington Post, The New York Times, and MSNBC were inaccessible.

Oddly, Fox News and Breitbart were also blocked. Oh, those youthful DOGE engineers….

We Can Fight Disinformation and Affect Climate Understanding

Secretary-General António Guterres launched the United Nations Global Principles for Information Integrity in 2024. Guterres wanted to highlight the climate crisis as a particular area of concern, stating, “Coordinated disinformation campaigns are seeking to undermine climate action.”

Much evidence confirms the Secretary-General’s dismay.

George Mason University’s Center for Climate Change Communication has released the results of its Fall 2024 survey on global warming beliefs.

• People in the US who think global warming is happening outnumber those who think it is not happening: 73% versus 14%.
• 60% of Americans understand that global warming is mostly human-caused. By contrast, 28% think it is caused mostly by natural changes in the environment.
• 57% of people in the US understand that most scientists think global warming is happening. By contrast, 21% think there is a lot of disagreement among scientists about whether it is happening.
• Half of the respondents (49%) have personally experienced the effects of global warming.

Disinformation campaigns — which often use AI to refine their messaging — reflect the intent of well-funded vested interest groups that benefit from marginalizing environmental issues such as climate change. It’s been well-documented that disinformation campaigns significantly influence people’s beliefs about climate change. As the fossil fuel industry continues to spread disinformation throughout media platforms around the globe, an institution that most of us have considered unflappable to this threat — the news media — has, actually, been an enabler. Major news organizations seem to turn a proverbial blind eye to fossil fuel disinformation.

ExxonMobil’s own research into the results of the “Unexpected Energy” campaign have produced favorable opinions about the company. Moreover, peer-reviewed research has confirmed there is a causal link between ExxonMobil’s native advertising claims and how consumers perceive the company’s climate-related actions.

Then again, a just-released 2025 study published in Nature exposed participants to a misleading ExxonMobil advertisement — some with disclosures and others preceded by inoculation messages. ExxonMobil’s “Future of Energy” advertisement was effective at influencing beliefs, but so, too, were disclosures and inoculation messaging. For example, respondents reduced their belief in the specific claim that “ExxonMobil is investing heavily in alternative fuels like algae and farm waste.”

These findings highlight the value of using disclosures alongside inoculation to counter climate disinformation, providing a foundation for communication strategies that support climate action. The authors also warn that “presumably unbiased news organizations legitimize content from entities such as ExxonMobil without adequate disclosures. Such practices only serve to create content confusion, amplify fossil fuel companies’ greenwashing narratives, and further fuel public distrust in mainstream news media.”

Another project examined the persuasive effects of moral appeals on public support for the transition from fossil fuels to clean, renewable energy. The researchers wondered if communicators might create more durable persuasion by adding explicit moral claims. That means campaigns to promote renewable energy sources would be designed as a matter of right or wrong versus the norm of information-based messages.

The findings suggest that direct statements about the morality or immorality of different future of energy sources do not necessarily enhance the persuasiveness of messages. Across four different messages, about 30–50% of the original treatment effect was still present after about three weeks, with was no evidence of an added boost in durability from the explicit moralization of the message.