The Iran energy crisis is the clearest evidence yet that the global transition to clean energy and energy security are not competing priorities but inseparable imperatives, the head of the International Energy Agency has argued. Fatih Birol, speaking in Canberra, said the crisis — equivalent to the combined force of the 1970s twin oil shocks and the Ukraine gas emergency — had demonstrated once again that dependence on fossil fuels from politically unstable regions carried catastrophic strategic risks. He called for the clean energy transition to be explicitly framed as an energy security strategy, not just an environmental one.
Birol said that every renewable energy installation, every electric vehicle, every heat pump, and every unit of energy efficiency improvement was a reduction in the world’s dependence on the kind of vulnerable supply chains that the Iran crisis had exposed. Clean energy was not just about reducing carbon emissions — it was about reducing the world’s exposure to geopolitical supply disruptions that could cause economic devastation on the scale now being experienced.
The conflict began February 28 with US and Israeli strikes on Iran and has since removed 11 million barrels of oil per day and 140 billion cubic metres of gas from world markets. At least 40 Gulf energy assets have been severely damaged, and the Hormuz strait — through which approximately 20 percent of global oil flows — remains closed. The IEA deployed 400 million barrels from strategic reserves on March 11 in its largest emergency action.
Birol confirmed further releases were under consideration and said the IEA was consulting with governments across Europe, Asia, and North America. He called for demand-side policies including remote work, lower speed limits, and reduced commercial aviation. He met with Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and said Australia’s renewable energy potential made it uniquely well positioned to benefit from accelerating both the global clean energy transition and its own energy security.
Trump’s 48-hour ultimatum to Iran to reopen the strait expired without result, and Tehran threatened retaliatory strikes on US and allied energy and water infrastructure. Birol concluded that the Iran crisis should permanently end any debate about whether energy security and climate goals were in tension. He said they were two aspects of the same strategic imperative — and that pursuing them together, urgently and ambitiously, was the only approach that made sense in a world where energy supply disruptions of this magnitude were clearly possible.