An energy transition driven by ethics

“Fossil fuel dependency is ripping away national security and sovereignty, and replacing it with subservience and rising costs,” UN climate change arm executive secretary Simon Stiell told European Union officials and Ministers in Brussels on March 16, 2026, against the backdrop of the U.S.-Israel-Iran war. He added that the disruption serves as an “abject lesson” on the pitfalls of banking on fossil fuels.

The war in West Asia has disproportionately affected economies such as India which gets nearly 60% of its crude oil from the region. The closure of the Strait of Hormuz has forced state-run refineries to declare force majeure — an act of god. Pushing a country like India to abandon its remaining coal or domestic gas reserves without a take-off ramp could lead to industrial collapse.

Mr. Stiell’s comments are reminiscent of the expressions of impatience by climate negotiators and stakeholders about how slow countries have been to switch away from fossil fuels: in 2021, activist Greta Thunberg called the COP26 talks “blah, blah, blah”.

The West used fossil fuels to build its strategic reserves and today can’t deny India and other countries like it the same opportunities, especially as the latter waits for its renewables infrastructure to mature and expand. At the same time, India’s reliance on fossil fuels from West Asia is obviously why its economy is currently hostage to the region’s geopolitical crisis.

Dependence on minerals

Mr. Stiell et al. have argued that renewables are immune to such blockades, which is true in part: if the flow of fossil fuels stops today — it is pinched in the Strait of Hormuz — the ‘flow’ of energy also stops, because we burn fossil fuels to release energy. With renewables, the critical minerals are not the source of energy itself. Once the state has set up solar panels and erected wind turbines, their ability to generate energy cannot be embargoed because they will operate as long as the sun shines and the wind blows.

However, critical minerals still represent a significant bottleneck, with additional complications such as the number of industries that need them — from consumer electronics to missile targeting, with the renewable energy sector somewhere in between. The supply chains for many minerals are even more concentrated than oil. The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC+) controls around 40% of global oil production. And while the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Australia plus Chile extract most of the cobalt and lithium, respectively, a single country — China — currently processes almost 60% of the world’s lithium, 70% of its cobalt, and 90% of rare-earth elements.

With renewable energy also making intensive use of hardware, a blockade of the required components, whether it be turbine blades or magnets based on rare earth minerals, would be just as effective as one of oil. At that point, it is once again a question of whether war could break out between the world’s primary mineral-processing hubs.

Fossil versus mineral

The “abject lesson” is only so abject because of the prevailing oil situation. If, say, the West Asia conflict had not begun and Brent crude was $65 a barrel, the trade-off for renewables could return to seeming like a moral luxury — in turn retrenching the value of ‘shock’ events like wars to push the world away from fossil fuels. And to that extent, perhaps Mr. Stiell et al. are smart to seize the chance.

Without a war driving prices up, the high upfront capital expenditure for renewables is less attractive to governments. If oil is cheap, the payback period for a large offshore wind farm might be 15 years; if gas prices jump 50%, this period could shrink to 4-5 years. In other words, sans a war, governments would have continued to place fiscal responsibility before energy sovereignty.

In the same scenario, the world’s dependencies on the critical mineral supply chain presents itself as a scarier prospect. If West Asia is stable and oil is flowing, the U.S. and its allies would likely view the option of trading West Asian oil for Chinese minerals as a net loss in strategic autonomy, which could encourage countries to reshore mineral mining and processing capabilities even before the energy transition picks up pace.

For India, a more stable supply of oil together with its arguably excessive focus on easing business could render its off-ramp into a long and gentle slope with room to continue using its domestic coal and cheap imported gas to power industrial growth while waiting for renewables to mature.

In other words, the Strait of Hormuz blockade could be forcing India to accelerate investments in renewables simply because it has no choice.

Fear not an effective tool

Mr. Stiell is in effect wielding fear as his primary tool, especially when he says “dependency is ripping away national security”. The effects of fear never last — especially when countries imagine new ways to outmanoeuvre these threats. What ultimately matters is ethics. The virtue of renewables should be debated, and adopted, in order to save the planet rather than for saving the economy for another month.

This also matters because when oil is cheap, the environmental damage of mining lithium, or human rights issues in Congolese cobalt mines are scrutinised more heavily by the public — and while this is as it should be, it should not just be because oil is cheap.

Published – March 26, 2026 01:06 am IST