UK’s New Disinformation Centre Must Treat Climate Lies as a Security Threat, ECIU Warns

Last updated: 23 September 2026

LONDON — Prime Minister Andy Burnham has announced that the United Kingdom will establish a new centre dedicated to tackling disinformation, explicitly including Russian-origin disinformation, in a speech at the United Nations General Assembly in New York City. The announcement, reported by the BBC on 23 September 2026, was immediately seized upon by the Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit (ECIU) as a landmark moment in the fight against climate change misinformation. Gareth Redmond-King, international analyst at the ECIU, said that climate change misinformation should no longer be viewed as a niche environmental concern but as a major national security risk, one that ranks alongside inaction on climate change itself. He pointed to the United Nations Global Risk Report 2026 and the World Economic Forum Global Risks Report 2026, both of which identify climate misinformation and the failure to address climate change as two of the gravest strategic challenges facing Western democracies. The new centre, according to the Prime Minister’s announcement, will be tasked with detecting, analysing and countering disinformation campaigns designed to distort public debate, undermine trust in institutions and delay action on critical policy challenges. While the full remit has not yet been detailed, the explicit reference to Russia signals that the UK regards foreign interference in its information environment as a persistent and serious threat. The ECIU’s response goes further, arguing that the centre must place climate disinformation at the heart of its work, because the consequences of allowing that disinformation to flourish are not limited to politics. They affect the physical safety of citizens, the stability of energy supplies and the viability of the global economy. By announcing the initiative at the UN General Assembly, Burnham has framed the issue as both a national and an international challenge, requiring cooperation across governments, technology platforms, intelligence agencies and civil society. The timing, at the start of the UN General Assembly’s high-level week, underscores the urgency of the threat and the importance the UK now attaches to defending the truth as a strategic asset.

Redmond-King’s warning is grounded in hard evidence from the alliance’s own assessments. In 2024, NATO published its Climate Change and Security Impact Assessment Report, which warned that Russian efforts to promote climate change denialism across member states had accelerated. The report identified Russia as the main driver of misinformation about the clean energy transition online, a finding that has since been corroborated by numerous academic studies and civil society investigations. According to the ECIU analyst, this makes it “clear that hostile actors are increasingly attempting to derail progress towards net zero with a view to keeping countries dependent on the imported oil and gas that they exert control over.” The strategy is not difficult to decode. Russia is one of the world’s largest producers and exporters of oil and gas, and its economy, as well as its capacity to project power, depends heavily on fossil fuel revenues. If the world succeeds in decarbonising rapidly, those revenues will decline, and Russia’s geopolitical leverage will shrink accordingly. It is therefore rational, from the Kremlin’s perspective, to invest in disinformation that slows the energy transition. This includes promoting climate denialism, attacking renewable energy technologies, spreading falsehoods about electric vehicles and heat pumps, and amplifying voices that claim net zero is economically ruinous or undemocratic. The NATO report made clear that this is not a marginal activity but a central element of Russian information warfare, coordinated across state media, social media networks and proxy organisations. For Western democracies, the implications are profound: public opinion is a battlefield, and climate policy is one of the main fronts. The new UK centre will need to understand these tactics in detail, expose their use and build resilience against them, not only among policymakers but also among the wider public. The ECIU’s intervention is a reminder that the threat from climate denialism is not merely academic; it is an active operation designed to weaken the West at a moment when climate change itself is already imposing growing costs.

The most effective countermeasure, Redmond-King argued, is speed. “The faster we deploy renewables and net zero tech – including electric heat pumps and electric vehicles – the less dependent we are on imported oil and gas that can be weaponised by malign actors like Putin,” he said. This is not simply a rhetorical flourish; it is a strategic calculation. Every wind farm built, every solar panel installed, every home converted to a heat pump and every car switched to electric power reduces the volume of fossil fuels that the UK and its allies must import from countries like Russia. It also reduces the ability of hostile actors to use energy exports as a weapon, a tactic that was vividly demonstrated when Russia cut off or reduced gas supplies to European countries in an attempt to influence their policies and punish their support for Ukraine. The faster the transition to clean energy proceeds, the less leverage the Kremlin and other petrostates possess. Redmond-King’s mention of heat pumps and electric vehicles is particularly important, because these are the technologies that ordinary citizens are being asked to adopt, and they are also the technologies most heavily targeted by disinformation. False claims about the cost, reliability, performance and environmental benefits of these technologies are widespread, and they are often designed to discourage people from making the very changes that would help break the cycle of energy dependence. By accelerating deployment, governments can create a positive feedback loop: as more people experience the benefits of clean technology, the harder it becomes for hostile actors to persuade them that the transition is a failure. This, in turn, strengthens public support for further action, making it more difficult for fossil fuel interests and their political allies to slow progress. The ECIU’s analysis makes clear that the clean energy transition is not just an environmental policy but a central pillar of national security. It is also a way to reclaim agency in a world where energy has too often been used as a weapon by autocratic regimes.

Redmond-King also drew attention to the increasingly visible impacts of global warming in the UK. He noted that Britain has been “sweltering through unprecedented heatwaves this summer only possible because of climate change.” These extreme weather events, he said, make it all the more important that the British public have access to reliable information about the nature of the challenge and the steps needed to address it. In a media environment saturated with falsehoods, manipulated images and coordinated disinformation campaigns, the provision of accurate, accessible information is itself a form of public protection. The ECIU analyst insisted that net zero remains the only credible solution to stop the impacts of climate change worsening, and that undermining public confidence in that solution is a direct threat to citizens’ safety and wellbeing. The new centre, therefore, has a dual mission: to counter foreign interference and to ensure that democratic debate on climate policy is based on evidence rather than deception. The summer heatwaves in Britain, which scientists have concluded would have been extremely unlikely without human-induced climate change, provided a stark demonstration of the stakes. They were not isolated events but part of a global pattern of rising temperatures, more frequent extreme weather and growing stress on ecosystems, water supplies and human health. When the public is exposed to a constant stream of contradictory messages, some of which are deliberately seeded by foreign actors, the capacity of governments to implement long-term climate policies is severely weakened. People become confused, polarised and fatalistic. They may delay installing a heat pump, buying an electric vehicle or supporting renewable energy projects. They may vote for parties that promise to delay or abandon net zero. All of this is exactly what the purveyors of disinformation want. The ECIU’s intervention underscores the need for the new centre to work closely with scientists, educators and journalists to ensure that the truth about climate change is not drowned out by the noise of propaganda. Without reliable information, even the most well-designed climate policies will struggle to gain the public support needed to survive electoral cycles and vested interests.

The announcement at the UN General Assembly is significant for several reasons. It places climate disinformation firmly within the realm of international diplomacy and security, alongside more traditional threats such as military aggression and cyber attacks. It also signals that the UK intends to work with other nations to expose and counter Russian information operations, rather than treating the problem as a purely domestic communications issue. The choice of New York as the venue underscores the global dimension of the challenge: disinformation does not respect national borders, and the networks that spread climate denialism often operate across multiple countries and platforms. By establishing a dedicated centre, the UK is creating an institutional base for ongoing research, monitoring and response, capable of adapting to new tactics and technologies. It also sends a message to hostile actors that their activities are being watched and will be challenged. The ECIU’s response, and Redmond-King’s emphasis on the security implications, suggests that the centre will need to work closely with the climate policy community, not just intelligence and security agencies, to ensure that counter-disinformation efforts are informed by the latest scientific evidence and energy data. The centre’s success will depend on its ability to translate complex issues into clear, compelling narratives that can compete with the falsehoods circulating online. It will also require sustained investment in media literacy, because the most effective defence against disinformation is a public that can recognise it. International cooperation will be essential as well: Russia’s tactics are employed not only against the UK but against many other democracies, and sharing intelligence, research and best practices can amplify the impact of national efforts. The UK has long been a target of Russian influence operations, and the new centre represents a determined effort to fight back using the tools of transparency and evidence. It is a recognition that in the 21st century, information is as important to national security as tanks, ships and warplanes, and that the battle for public opinion will shape the pace of the energy transition for years to come.

In his concluding remarks, Redmond-King called for an urgent and comprehensive response. The twin threats of climate misinformation and inaction on climate change, he said, are among the gravest strategic challenges facing Western democracies, and they are interconnected. Allowing false narratives to spread while failing to accelerate the transition to net zero would leave countries more exposed to climate impacts and more dependent on authoritarian regimes for energy. The UK’s new centre to tackle disinformation, including from Russia, is a welcome step, but it must be accompanied by tangible progress on renewables, electric heat pumps, electric vehicles and other net zero technologies. The faster the transition advances, the less leverage hostile actors have. And as Britain’s unprecedented summer heatwaves demonstrate, the cost of delay is measured not just in economic terms, but in lives, livelihoods and the habitability of the planet. The ECIU’s intervention serves as a reminder that climate policy is security policy, and that the fight against disinformation is inseparable from the fight against climate change. With the UN General Assembly providing a global stage, the UK now has an opportunity to lead by example, both in countering the lies and in delivering the solutions. The centre announced by Prime Minister Burnham will need robust funding, cross-party support and a clear mandate if it is to succeed. But above all, the response to climate misinformation must be built on the same foundation as the response to climate change itself: an unwavering commitment to the truth, backed by action. As world leaders gather in New York, the message from the ECIU is unmistakable: the security of democratic nations depends not only on their armed forces and intelligence agencies, but on their ability to tell the truth about climate change and to act on it with speed and determination. The new centre is a step in the right direction, but it is only one step in a much longer and more urgent journey. The challenge now is to ensure that it becomes more than a symbol — and that the UK, and its allies, treat the defence of the climate information space with the same seriousness as the defence of their physical borders.