One of the greatest spurts to environmental action was the series of oil shocks in the 1970s. As the Rapid Transition Alliance describe in a history of the era, it transformed the environmental movement from a focus on conservation to a focus on energy.
Governments responded in all sorts of ways to the wake-up call, from mandating engine efficiency standards to Brazil’s commitment to biofuels. President Carter put solar panels on the White House as a statement of intent.
Lessons from the 1970’s oil crisis
The supply shock also drove a wave of innovation in what was then seen as ‘alternative energy’.
By the end of the decade, the first wind farm was up and running in New Hampshire. The Passive House was developed in Germany. Everyone wanted an efficient Japanese car. The oil crisis profoundly changed the world. It’s a long transition, but it could be seen as the turning of the tide on fossil fuels.
According to Fatih Birol of the International Energy Agency (IEA), the supply shock from Trump’s war in Iran is more serious than all three 1970s episodes put together. Will it act as a similar catalyst for environmental action?
Donald Trump’s ironic own goal
If so, it would be profoundly ironic. Donald Trump hates clean energy and is committed to stopping it. This is proving very hard to do, to the point that Trump has issued executive orders to force coal power stations to remain operational while paying a billion dollars in taxpayers’ money to make wind power developers go away.
He has made the Orwellian demand that his minions always say “clean, beautiful coal” when naming the fossil fuel, and devised a cute cartoon mascot called Coalie to try to buff its filthy reputation.
In other words, flailing, farcical desperation is all Trump has. And with his actions in Iran, he’s made it spectacularly worse.
Unreliable and expensive fossil fuels
One of the biggest criticisms of renewable energy is that it is intermittent, and that gas or coal can provide a more reliable, constant power supply.
For entirely different reasons, gas can be an intermittent energy source too. Putin’s Russia has proved that several times over with its willingness to turn off or even blow up supply lines. Now Donald Trump has underlined it. Your enemies can use dependence on external energy supplies against you, but the folly of allies can be just as destructive.
All across the world, countries are counting the cost of interrupted energy supplies as Iran holds shipping routes hostage, with all kinds of implications for energy policy. Energy prices have risen across the board, and governments are scrambling to reduce taxes and keep energy affordable.
The world is cutting back on energy demand
Governments have released reserves where they have them, or faced protests and queues for fuel where they haven’t. Where shortages are most acute, more drastic interventions have been used, from a four-day work week in the Philippines to drivers in Myanmar only being allowed to use their cars on alternate days. Pakistan has reduced national speed limits, and Bangladesh has reduced air conditioning use in government buildings. The IEA has been tracking these sorts of actions, and it’s a very long list.
Much of this is crisis response and will presumably go back to normal as the dust settles. Some emergency measures will make things worse for the environment – several countries have fallen back on coal to get them through the interruption to gas and oil supplies. But there are long-term changes afoot as well.
Long-lasting and permanent implications
South Korea is using the crisis as a springboard to move faster on its energy transition. Laos is encouraging working from home as an immediate fuel-saving measure, but it’s also announced investments in EV charging and public transport, which will outlast the crisis. Chile has announced incentives for electric taxis, and several countries have dropped import taxes on EVs. Not that people need to be told – enquiries about electric vehicles are up everywhere.
Interest in solar power has rocketed, too. UK supplier Octopus reports a 50% rise in demand for its solar offer. The British government has fast-tracked its plans for plug-in solar, something I’ve been looking forward to since Germany popularised it in the wake of the 2022 energy price spike.
A wave of transitions
Other transitions are underway, depending on different countries’ exposure to the crisis. India, for example, relies on LPG for domestic cooking, and the shortage has been disastrous. There has been a surge in demand for induction cookers. Others have fallen back on coal or biomass. At the other end of the technology scale, the first hydrogen cooker just went on sale in India last week. The Iran crisis has been hugely disruptive to the simple business of cooking a meal in India, and it is likely to accelerate the existing shift towards other methods.
This won’t be fast, and it will be problematic. Grid infrastructure and renewable energy capacity can’t expand overnight. But the current crisis has increased the resolve to move beyond fossil fuels and the vulnerabilities they create. It will accelerate government plans, and could create the political will to get things done even where governments haven’t previously shown much leadership on climate change.
“Renewables are needed now more than ever—not just for climate and environmental reasons but to break up volatile supply chains and reduce the leverage of oil and gas states,” Ken Silverstein wrote for Forbes recently, “For years, clean energy has been sold as a moral imperative. Now it is simply an economic and geopolitical necessity. It’s not about emissions. It’s about resilience and price stability.”
The violence and destruction involved in Trump’s war don’t make this a positive story. But I do wonder – if Donald Trump were a more enlightened man and had thrown his weight behind renewable energy, could he have done more to accelerate the energy transition than he is likely to achieve through blundering incompetence?
First published in The Earthbound Report.
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