French PR Executive Behind Fake Anti-Heat Pump Social Media Accounts; Bonus - The Ads Are Also Anti-Semitic

A French PR executive with links to the gas industry appears to be behind an online campaign to discredit clean heating, it can be revealed. The new investigation by DeSmog and Politico found boutique Paris-based PR firm Digital Tellers is linked to a web of connected Facebook groups and accounts, which regularly share false claims about the cost, noise and reliability of heat pumps.

Electricity-powered heat pumps, which draw air from outside homes and transfer it into heating, are critical to Europe’s plans to reduce its reliance on volatile, planet-heating gas. Studies show that this low-carbon technology is up to three times more efficient than gas boilers, and, when properly installed, can halve households’ heating bills. But posts disseminated in the Facebook groups by several inauthentic accounts describe heat pumps as “useless” and compare them to a “lawn mower that never stops”, while installers are branded “swindlers” (“margoulins”) and “environmental fraudsters” (“éco-délinquants”).

Three of the graphics – which were posted in the groups by an admin and regular contributor – appear to be AI-generated, and deploy antisemitic tropes, with heat pump installers shown as conmen, with hooked noses, open shirts and gold chains, alongside examples of poor workmanship. “The drawings associate these visual tropes with money and social climbing,” explains Jonas Pardo, an antisemitism expert at French antiracist organisation Boussole. Pardo noted that it is difficult to know “whether the prompt that generated these images contained the word ‘Jew’ or whether it is the AI itself that represents what is deemed dishonest enrichment using the codes of antisemitic caricature”.

DeSmog located the source of heat pump disinformation in seven Facebook groups, the first of which appeared in February 2021 – around the same time that The Digital Tellers was hired to do communications for a gas trade group, Les Professionnels du Gaz (PG), in a contract that included social media strategy, community management and content creation.

EDIT

https://www.desmog.com/2026/04/23/french-pr-executive-behind-facebook-network-spreading-heat-pump-hate/