Oil vs. Renewables
3 years, 4 months, 1 days, 22 hours
20 March 2026
Sunlight doesn’t travel through the Strait of Hormuz.
‘The report finds that in all scenarios achieving Net Zero is a more cost-effective path for the UK economy than continued reliance on fossil fuels’.
This, the headline summary of the report published a week ago by the UK’s Climate Change Committee, adds yet more weight to the overwhelming evidence that investing in renewable energy is a no-brainer. The cost-benefit analysis presented concludes that every pound spent on Net Zero delivers benefits worth up to 4 pounds.
But if a report by UK boffins doesn’t convince you, how about a good old-fashioned global energy crisis?
I hesitate to suggest that any good can come out of the terrible war that the US and Israel are waging on Iran, but an acceleration of the energy transition towards renewable energy looks likely. In the latest Outrage and Optimism podcast, Bruce Douglas, CEO of the Global Renewables Alliance, references the steps taken in just the last few weeks by Egypt, Indonesia, Korea and the Philippines to boost renewable energy investment.
In Europe there is extensive coverage (for example in this euronews article) of the fact that Spain’s leading adoption of renewable energy (now over 55% of generating capacity) is shielding it from the wholesale gas price hike, as well as having delivered some of the cheapest household energy prices in Europe. The impact on Pakistan is similarly mitigated, to a degree, by a boom in private investment in solar panels. Meanwhile an article in The Economist in late February explained how a huge increase in imports of solar panels to Cuba was providing some protection to that country against the US energy embargo.
How deliciously ironic that a US president who is a climate change denier and oil junkie is turbo-charging the world’s race to renewables. I just wish it wasn’t at the cost to a people that has suffered so much at the hands of its own leaders and is now being bombed relentlessly by foreign powers.
Nonetheless, ‘Sunlight doesn’t travel through the Strait of Hormuz’ deserves to become a lasting slogan for the energy security and price stability of a net zero world.