ENERGY SECURITYTwo Months in, the Iran War Has Changed the Global Energy System Forever
The conflict may be the beginning of the end of fossil fuel dominance. Here’s which energy sources stand to win and lose.
For almost half a century, the vast majority of climate experts have agreed on a solution to global warming: stop burning fossil fuels like coal, oil, and natural gas. But despite the political efforts of governments across the world to promote replacing these fuels, fossil sources have remained a stubbornly large share of global energy — around 80 percent at last count.
But the war in Iran, which the United States and Israel launched two months ago this week, may turn out to be the push that dislodges fossil fuels’ place atop the world’s energy system. The Strait of Hormuz, the narrow waterway near Iran through which 20 percent of the world’s oil and natural gas supplies flow, has been blocked since early March, with no relief in sight. This has created the biggest energy crisis in modern history. Twenty-five countries are now reporting critical road fuel, jet fuel, or heating oil shortages.
But unlike the oil shock of the 1970s, which occurred in a time when substitutes for fossil fuels were not yet powerful or cheap enough to build at scale, this disruption is happening as renewable energy sources are beginning to outcompete fossil fuels, providing countries with new energy options at costs that have plummeted in recent years.
“We now have a viable alternative,” said Selwin C. Hart, a special adviser to the United Nations Secretary-General, at a first-of-its-kind international conference on transitioning away from fossil fuels in Colombia this week. “Renewables have changed the equation.”
But even though this calculus has changed, it’s too soon to say where the chips will fall as the world’s energy system evolves. While the reliability of a huge chunk of the world’s oil and natural gas is now perhaps permanently in question, it’s not certain that renewables will fill all or even most of the gap. Coal, the most polluting fossil fuel, is taking on a renewed appeal in a world desperate to replace natural gas for electricity, and it remains difficult for solar and wind to replace the around-the-clock power provided by both of those fossil fuels.
“It’s hard to say which direction things will go,” Daan Walter, a lead researcher at the energy think tank Ember, told Grist.
