The disastrous US-Israel war against Iran has disrupted energy supply across the world. Governments in both rich and poor countries are warning their people of dire times ahead, unlike anything seen before by this generation: acute energy scarcity, rationing and even the prospect of cars and aeroplanes running out of fuel. The question is what will the future energy map look like?
As I ask this, I would request you to not make light of the assassinations, the thousands of lives lost and the senseless destruction that we witness so clearly as we scroll through our screens. Let us also not make light of the real pain that this energy disruption has brought to our world. Many countries are facing shortages of cooking fuel, including liquefied petroleum gas (LPG), and households are spending vast portions of their income to procure it at any cost. Long queues at fuel stations are becoming common—again, driving up costs that people can barely afford. In most countries, particularly in our world, fuel imports are the highest charge on trade deficits and in this scenario, rising oil prices have crippling effects on economies.
Then the impending shortfall in global fertiliser supply is expected to hit farmers hard—those already reeling from extreme weather driven by climate change and distorted global food prices.
All in all, the world is on its knees—not by choice, but because of its pusillanimous and pathetic response to this senseless US-Israel war. The rules-based order and all its morality lie in tatters. Let’s at least be clear on this.
But this leaves us with the question of what will be the impact of this shock on energy? Even before this unseemly war, the world was in the midst of an energy transition—steadily replacing coal with renewables for electricity and displacing the use of petrol and diesel in vehicles. According to the International Renewable Energy Agency’s March 2026 report, by the end of 2025, renewables accounted for close to 50 per cent of the world’s installed electricity generation; 85 per cent of new power additions that year were renewables, mainly solar and wind.
What is interesting is that this energy transition was not happening only where one might expect—China or even Europe. A recent report by think tank Ember, in partnership with a coalition of 74 of the world’s most climate-vulnerable countries, found that these countries were fast-tracking electro-tech, not because of climate change but because it was faster, cheaper and more reliable. These low- and middle-income economies are fuel importers, and for them, the energy crisis is real: over 700 million still lack reliable energy for basic needs. This also means they are not yet connected to the grid and so can adopt an alternative energy system at speed and scale. The costs of solar panels and batteries and electric vehicles have become affordable and import from China works for them. These countries can bypass fossil fuel and fast-track renewables. The report finds, “Namibia and Togo lead in solar generation, Jordan and Kyrgyzstan in battery sales, and Nepal and Sri Lanka in EV uptake”. In the latter two countries, close to 70 per cent of new vehicles were electric.
The current disruption has raised the cost of energy imports and made countries aware of the need for energy security. Already, there is a new scramble to gain markets for oil and gas—Nigeria, Guyana, Russia and, of course, the US will be sourced for energy. This could well push countries to utilise more of their own resources—from coal to charcoal—both of them polluting. It could also spur the transition away from fossil fuels, as imported solar panels and batteries are now available.
All this will reshape the future of energy. The current oil-and-gas crisis is not just short-term. The closure of the Strait of Hormuz has disrupted some 20 per cent of the global flows but even as this opens, damages to production facilities in the region will take time to repair. This could mean that the time for cheap and abundant fossil fuels is over.
The cost of energy is the cost of economic growth and so, this changed scenario will mean reworking plans for energy security. The drivers would be cost; it would be national manufacturing capability of green technologies, including solar and electric vehicles; it would also be what is better for energy security-related supply-chains. In all this, clean energy sources and more efficient use of existing supplies can and must play a central role. But this time, the rationale for the clean energy transition would be rooted in national energy security, with the possibility to achieve co-benefit of climate mitigation.
As I write this, I must acknowledge, with much sadness, that the future is not going to be easy. This current time tells me that we, as a global society, have regressed. It is going to be hard to pick up the pieces from these ruins of human depredation and depravity. We will find it hard to solve global problems like climate change in a world that is so abjectly broken and divided.