There may be propaganda here, but it also does happen. In California, every solar power station has been sued by the Sierra Club at some point. Usually over some endangered toad, but the real force (and funding) behind the suits is the labor unions, who want the projects to pay them more. It’s a big shakedown.
I cannot tell you how much "the labor unions are using environmental groups as muscle to shut down the good work the energy industry is doing" sounds like propaganda.
I know right? It is hard for me to repeat to be honest, because it sounds exactly like crazy Fox News fantasy. But, I have seen it with my own eyes. The phenomenon first came to my attention in the matter of "Kern County Citizens For Responsible Solar" versus First Solar's Willow Springs Project. The bogus citizens' group is a front organization for union labor who are trying to extract higher wages in project labor agreements. They file their objections on the draft environmental impact reports, which preserves their standing under CEQA to delay the project in the courts.
This site has an extensive archive of such DEIR comments and subsequent lawsuits for hundreds of projects around the state. It's just how labor negotiations are done in California, now. All the letters and motions are the same, all the front groups have the same name except with different cities or counties, and they are all drafted by the same law firm. A typical example is at [1].
