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Can green technologies deliver energy security in an unstable world?
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Container ships were forced to dock at ports in the United Arab Emirates and other Middle Eastern nations after the Iranian government announced that it would close the Strait of Hormuz in July.Credit: AFP via Getty Images
Protesters burnt tyres and blocked roads in Syria over fuel prices. French fishers blockaded a fuel depot and clashed with police. Government and household budgets were squeezed around the world as interest rates rose and the sales of electric vehicles roughly doubled year-on-year in several countries, including Australia, Brazil and India.
These were just some of the many knock-on effects of the US and Israeli airstrikes on Iran that began in February. The closure of the Strait of Hormuz, through which about 25% of the world’s oil trade and 20% of exported liquefied natural gas previously passed, caused what the International Energy Agency (IEA) called “the largest supply disruption in the history of the global oil market”, as fuel prices spiked worldwide.
The resulting strain has exacerbated the economic pressures already felt from previous shocks, including the Russia–Ukraine war, the COVID-19 pandemic and the 2008 global financial crash, as well as from the continuing effects of climate change. The current global energy-security picture is “really bad on all fronts”, says Dan Marks, an energy-security researcher at the Royal United Services Institute, a think tank based in London. “It’s something of a perfect storm.”
Governments seeking to improve national energy security are taking a variety of approaches — from measures to reduce demand and increase electrification to infrastructure updates and incentive programmes to encourage renewable-energy investment. Researchers, meanwhile, are doing their bit, driving scientific and technological advances that have the potential to deliver a stable and sustainable future energy mix.
Human energy consumption is both growing and changing (see ‘Powering the planet’). Use of global primary energy — naturally occurring energy sources that have not undergone any processing by humans — more than doubled between 1980 and 2025. Over that period, consumption increased from around 85,000 terawatt hours (TWh) annually to 178,000 TWh. That’s approximately 71 times the yearly primary-energy consumption of France.
Electrification — the replacement of technologies that burn fossil fuels with alternatives powered by electricity — is advancing in many countries as various industries look into switching to renewables. Worldwide, electricity demand is predicted to increase by around 40% by 2035, compared with current levels (see ‘The road ahead’). Despite this, many industries are still reliant on fossil fuels. Close to 99% of aviation and more than 90% of shipping relies on fossil fuels, for example. One-quarter of extracted natural gas is used to heat industrial buildings, and around 21% is used for heating and cooking in homes worldwide. Most of the rest (40%) is used to generate electricity. Although the share of primary energy generated by renewables is growing, oil, coal and gas still account for about 80% of energy production.
The IEA defines energy security as reliable, affordable access to all fuels and energy sources. Marks and others highlight that priorities vary internationally, with reliability often seen as of primary importance in high-income countries and affordability taking precedence in low-income nations. The impacts of global shocks to fuel supplies and prices also vary according to how reliant countries are on imported fossil fuels. “There isn’t one global energy-security picture, but many different context-dependent pictures,” says Severin Borenstein, an energy economist at the University of California, Berkeley.
Economies that rely on imported oil products are particularly vulnerable to the current shocks. The World Food Programme, p