Ralph Maraj
The US/Israel war on Iran has exposed the fragility of modern civilisation with its dependence on fossil fuels. With Iran choking the Strait of Hormuz in retaliation, oil prices have skyrocketed, creating chaos in energy markets with soaring prices and long-term supply fears. This is “the greatest global energy security threat in history,” says head of the International Energy Agency, Fatih Birol.
But there is light in the darkness. The crisis is fuelling the transition to green energy, long accepted as indispensable for averting environmental Armageddon. Now, nations also see renewables as energy security from “a homegrown domestic source” and critical to reducing their exposure to grave geopolitical risks. Birol, therefore, expects “an acceleration” of the global energy transition.
The foundation has been laid. Even before the war, clean energy was already dominating new power installations. Last year, renewables accounted for 85 per cent of all new global power capacity, with solar as the dominant primary driver. “It’s amazing,” says Birol. “Ten years ago, solar was a romantic story. Now it is a business.”
Indeed, way back in 2014, I told Trinidad and Tobago that renewables would be “the fastest growing class of energy.” The pace is now “astounding,” “turbocharged.” And will move even faster. For, unlike previous oil shocks, the Iran crisis meets renewable power already more competitive in many nations. Not T&T, of course. We squandered ten precious years under the last administration.
While the last cabinet floundered and slumbered, electro tech—solar and wind power, batteries, electrified transport, heating and industry—became the dominant engine of global energy growth. Today, high fuel prices from the Iran crisis “accelerates the shift to renewables and electrification, making already cheap electro-tech even more competitive,” says energy think-tank Ember, whose research manager, Sam Butler-Sloss, declares: “With electro-tech, nations now have the tools to increasingly eliminate imported fuels altogether.”
Hear that, folks? No shutting of the Strait of Hormuz could then cripple the world economy.
And China, emerging as the world’s first “electro-state,” is proving the point. The world’s largest oil importer has been pushing intensively at substituting electricity for oil, with batteries and electric power at the centre of the effort. Its renewable energy successes today protect its markets from the current crisis.
Beijing’s growing electric-powered network incorporates cars, homes, factories and global trade. It will now “spare no effort” to electrify its shipping fleet for the high seas. It now generates more electricity each year than the US and European Union combined. Installed renewable energy capacity make up 56 per cent of the nation’s total, a record high. And last year, 54 per cent of new cars sold in China were either battery-powered or plug-in hybrids.
Indeed, the Iran crisis has been further fuelling use of electric vehicles (EVs) across the world, particularly in Asia, where it could save importers more than $600 billion a year in oil imports. Butler-Sloss describes the switch as a “security super-lever” and forecasts that the Iran conflict “will push Asia to cut oil dependency with even cheaper technology available.”
South Korean President Lee Jae Myung encapsulates the Asian mood when he calls for a rapid shift to renewable energy and predicts “serious risk if we continue to rely on fossil fuels.”
This is now the universal approach. In the Pacific, the Philippines is aiming for a 40 per cent increase in wind and solar capacity. In the Caribbean, St Kitts and Nevis launched its Green Energy Transition last week with Energy Minister Konris Maynard saying, “If our country was completely powered by renewable energy at this stage, there would be no concern about potential rises in electricity costs.”
In Africa and Latin America, AI reports, the war is “accelerating the transition to renewable energy, electric vehicles and batteries.” And Europe has had “a wake-up call,” say energy analysts who highlight exemplary Spain, where investment in wind and solar technologies have reduced the country’s exposure to the current price volatility.
Today, from Sweden to Slovenia, Britain to Bulgaria, we are hearing the same message across the continent: “We have to speed up our transition away from foreign fossil fuels and toward domestic clean power. We have to accelerate our electrification.”
And note this. A fundamentally significant change accelerated by the crisis is the way nations and citizens view renewable energy. Former US assistant energy secretary, Geoffrey Pyatt, says it well: “Wind plus solar-plus batteries is becoming an increasingly compelling economic offer, and countries are pursuing it not as a climate objective but for economic energy access, and increasingly as an energy security option.”
In other words, pragmatism has joined idealism as another driving force in the energy revolution, making it unstoppable. We see it in Poland, where, notwithstanding significant ambivalence over climate change, soaring energy costs are spurring the expansion of renewables. Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk now boldly says to both sceptics and believers, “renewable energy sources, above all else, are the most sovereign energy source for Poland. The war in Iran clearly demonstrates how dangerous dependence on external energy supplies can be.” Well said.
Throughout the world, experts forecast an acceleration of “the global electrification megatrend.”
The Iran crisis is turbo-charging the global energy transition.
