Energy Security as a Means of Climate Policy: How the Iran War Is Rewiring the Energy Transition

Energy security is defined as having reliable and affordable access to energy within an economy, ensuring that households and industry can consistently meet their energy needs is the foundation of a functioning economy. In 2024, the EU produced only 43% of its own energy, with 57% of it having been imported. Most of those imports are fossil fuels (67% oil, natural gas at 24%), which have been disrupted in recent months due to the conflict in the Strait of Hormuz (European Commission, Directorate-General for Energy, 2026).

Renewables create an opportunity to increase domestic energy production to reduce reliance on imported fossil fuels that are susceptible to supply shocks and price volatility. Domestic EU oil and gas production is in structural decline, with extraction becoming increasingly uneconomical (Aylett et al., 2026). By contrast, in recent years, renewables such as wind and solar have become some of the most affordable energy production methods out there (Aylett et al., 2026). By nature, renewable production is decentralized, making it harder for supply to be disrupted. Furthermore, production and distribution can be tailored to community needs depending on the area in question. An example of this is community solar programs, which are owned by the locale they operate in, providing not only reliable energy but also a source of income and jobs for the area. Decentralizing an economy’s energy mix increases local resilience, reducing vulnerability to attacks on the central grid (Tšerkašina, 2026). Building municipal capacity towards greener energy production should not only be recognized as part of a climate action agenda but also Europe’s broader security architecture instead.

This security framing is particularly important in the context of the Iran war, where disruption to fossil fuel availability has made clear that energy dependence is not only an environmental concern, but also a geopolitical vulnerability.

The Iran war has exposed a central contradiction in the global energy transition. In the short term, conflict-driven energy insecurity pushes governments back toward fossil fuels through emergency oil releases, fuel subsidies, tax cuts, coal extensions, and new gas procurement. Yet in the longer term, the same crisis strengthens the case for renewables by revealing fossil fuel dependence as a strategic liability. The result is not a simple reversal of the energy transition. It is a reordering of it. Climate policy remains essential, but energy security is becoming the more politically powerful justification for decarbonization. This matters because energy transitions are not driven by technology alone. They are shaped by laws, infrastructure, public finance, emergency powers, and political narratives. If the previous generation of transition policies was framed primarily around emissions reduction, the next phase may be framed around resilience, reducing exposure to hostile suppliers, volatile commodity markets, and vulnerable maritime chokepoints.

The Strait of Hormuz illustrates the problem. The U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) describes Hormuz as one of the world’s most important oil chokepoints and reports that, in 2024, the amount of oil flowing through the strait averaged around 20 million barrels per day, equivalent to about 20 percent of the global consumption of petroleum liquids. The EIA also notes that ‘very few alternative options exist’ to move oil out of the region if the strait is closed. The International Energy Agency similarly states that Hormuz is ‘one of the world’s most critical oil transit chokepoints’, with an average of 20 million barrels per day of crude oil and oil products shipped through it in 2025.

This is why the current crisis is not only about prices. It is about the fragility of a system that depends on concentrated fossil fuel flows through militarily exposed infrastructure. The Foreign Policy analysis of the Iran war and the Hormuz energy crisis is useful in this respect because it asks not simply whether the crisis will raise energy prices, but how long the disruption could last. Its framing points to a larger policy problem: even when fighting slows, energy markets do not automatically return to normal. Shipping risk, insurance costs, inventories, spare capacity, and investor expectations can keep instability alive even after the immediate military shock has passed. Foreign Policy’s earlier reporting on the same crisis made a similar point, arguing that even a ceasefire would not immediately lower energy costs because market normalization could take months.

The policy implication is clear. Fossil fuel dependence creates geopolitical exposure. It is not merely a climate problem or an economic problem; it can be deemed a security problem. A country dependent on imported oil and gas is exposed not only to emissions and price volatility, but also to war, blockade, sanctions, sabotage, and coercive supply manipulation, as we have seen in recent years with conflicts in the Middle East. The solution? Nations that produce a larger share of their energy domestically from renewable sources. While such countries may not be immune to energy security risks, they are less exposed to the specific vulnerabilities of global hydrocarbon markets.

This line of thought is already visible in recent policy behaviour. In Europe, the clearest precedent is REPowerEU, which was adopted after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The European Commission frames the plan around ‘affordable, secure and sustainable energy’ and states that Europe is investing in clean energy while securing its energy independence. Although REPowerEU was designed in response to Russia rather than Iran, its underlying ideas apply to the Hormuz crisis: dependency on energy import can rapidly become a geopolitical liability and clean domestic generation could reduce that dependence.

Chatham House makes the same argument more explicitly. Their 2026 report on EU energy security argues that the idea that decarbonization conflicts with energy security is merely a myth. According to them, ‘renewables and electrification hold the keys to a more energy-secure future’. Furthermore, the report identifies the EU’s dependence on imported fossil fuels as the core source of energy insecurity, highlighting that 58 percent of the EU’s energy comes from oil and gas, ‘of which nearly all is imported’. Therefore, the case for renewables in the name of security does not require abandoning climate logic; it strengthens it.

The legal significance of this shift is also substantial. Energy security is beginning to reshape how governments justify and implement transition policies. The EU’s Council Regulation 2022/2577 is a clear example. Adopted as an emergency measure to accelerate renewable deployment, the regulation links renewables directly to security of supply. It states that Russia’s weaponization of gas supplies had threatened EU security and that faster deployment of renewable energy could help form ‘a defence’ against such actions. More to this point, the policy connects renewable deployment to reducing exposure to the brutal ‘high and volatile prices’ as well as increasing the security of energy supply.

That is not just rhetoric. The regulation accelerates things such as permitting procedures. Permitting is one of the most important but least visible bottlenecks in the deployment of renewable energy. Wind farms, solar projects, grids, and storage facilities are often delayed not by technological limits, but by administrative procedures that are part of a larger issue within European bureaucracy. More specifically, these issues range from phenomena such as planning disputes, environmental assessments, grid connection queues and local opposition. By streamlining permitting, governments transform the abstract claim that renewables improve security into something viable and enforceable.

By bringing the Iranian war to centre stage, we can observe the fragility of climate policy under energy stress. Carbon Brief found that one month into the war, at least 60 countries had adopted emergency measures in response to the global energy crisis. These measures included policies to save fuel, support consumers and boost domestic energy supplies. Other reporting has described a wider range of crisis responses, including fuel subsidies, tax cuts, rationing, coal extensions, and even demand-reduction campaigns.

This contradiction exposes the fragility of climate policy under pressure. Carbon pricing, fossil fuel phase-outs, and clean-investment incentives all assume governments will stay consistent. But when prices spike, states are pushed to subsidize consumption, cut taxes or secure any available fossil supply, weakening the very price signals climate policy depends on. Yet emergency relief is not structural energy security. Subsidies may protect households in the short term, but they do not solve the deeper problem, dependence on volatile fossil fuel markets. Real security means reducing that exposure through domestic renewables, electrification, efficiency, grid expansion, and storage.

This is where renewables gain their political strength. They are no longer only climate tools. They can be framed as resilience measures that protect consumers from price shocks, reduce dependence on unstable suppliers and limit the economic impact of conflicts such as the Iran war. The policy choice is therefore clear. Governments can keep trying to secure fossil fuel routes, reserves, and alternative suppliers, or they can reduce the strategic importance of those routes by cutting fossil fuel demand. If Hormuz can place roughly a fifth of global petroleum liquids consumption under stress, then reducing oil dependence becomes not just climate policy, but security policy.

The Iran war is therefore not derailing the energy transition. It is changing its political foundation. In the short term, it encourages fossil fuel subsidies and emergency procurement. In the long term, it makes the strategic case for renewables stronger. Fossil fuel dependence is no longer only an environmental liability. It is a geopolitical exposure.

Ultimately, the Iran war demonstrates that the energy transition should not be understood only as a climate project. It is increasingly becoming a security project as well. Fossil fuel dependence leaves states exposed to military conflict, price shocks, coercive suppliers, and vulnerable maritime chokepoints. While renewables, by contrast, offer a way to reduce this exposure by increasing domestic production, decentralizing supply and strengthening local resilience. However, this does not mean that renewable energy removes every security risk in its entirety. Grids must still be expanded, storage must be improved, permitting must be accelerated, and critical supply chains still must be protected. However, these challenges are significantly different from the structural vulnerability created by dependence on imported oil and gas, yet are far more ideal in contrast.

For Europe, the conclusion is clear. Emergency fossil fuel measures may be politically necessary in moments of crisis, but they cannot provide long term energy security. Such security requires reducing fossil fuel demand, expanding renewable generation, investing in electrification, and building energy systems that are harder to disrupt or manipulate. The Iran war has therefore not weakened the case for the energy transition, rather it has made the case more urgent. Consequently, climate policy and energy security are no longer separate agendas, as under current geopolitical conditions, they are becoming the same project.

Bibliography

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