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Clean power’s crisis dividend

The article argues that the new Gulf war has made clean energy look less like a climate preference and more like a security asset. The immediate temptation is to assume coal will be the main beneficiary of disrupted energy markets, especially in countries that have domestic coal but rely on imported liquefied natural gas. Coal is indeed getting a short-term lift. But The Economist’s sharper point is that the closure of the Strait of Hormuz strengthens the case for solar, wind and other renewables even more.

The reason is simple: fossil fuels are globally traded commodities, so war, chokepoints and shipping disruptions can quickly become household and industrial costs. Solar panels and wind turbines are not immune to supply-chain politics, but once they are installed, they produce power without waiting for tankers, pipelines or diplomatic breakthroughs. In a more fragmented world, that independence becomes part of their value.

The numbers have shifted

The article uses two recent energy reports to show that the economics of clean power have already changed. The International Energy Agency estimates that solar photovoltaics supplied more than a quarter of the world’s new demand for energy last year, ahead of natural gas. Ember, a research firm focused on electricity, found that in 2025 new renewable generation exceeded the rise in global electricity demand for the first time.

That milestone matters because it suggests renewables are no longer merely adding capacity at the edge of a fossil-fuel system. They are beginning to cover the world’s incremental electricity needs. Renewables also produced more electricity than coal worldwide, with a 34% share against coal’s 33%. Solar drove most of the growth: annual solar generation jumped from 2,143 to 2,778 terawatt-hours. Wind rose too, from 2,510 to 2,715 terawatt-hours. Together with hydropower, geothermal and smaller sources, renewables generated nearly 11,000 terawatt-hours.

Costs reinforce the same trend. The levelised cost of solar power, which combines capital and operating costs, has fallen by about 90% since 2010. Even after adding battery storage, solar is now cheaper than coal generation in India, a country often treated as a hard test case because it has abundant coal and rising energy demand. Onshore wind is cheaper still. Intermittency remains a real system cost, but the price gap has become difficult for fossil fuels to ignore.

Energy security is now part of the pitch

The strongest part of the article is its reframing of renewables as insurance. Germany’s clean-energy investments before Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine helped spare it EUR25bn, or about \$26bn, in gas imports. That was roughly equal to its usual annual gas-import bill. The lesson was not just environmental. A country that generates more of its own power is less exposed when suppliers become unreliable or hostile.

The current Gulf shock extends that lesson to Asia. Countries hit by gas shortages will notice that the world’s newly added solar generation last year exceeded the electricity that could have been produced by burning all the LNG exported from the Gulf in 2025. That comparison gives policymakers a concrete way to think about scale: renewables are no longer too small to matter in a crisis.

The closing implication is pragmatic rather than utopian. Fossil fuels will not disappear quickly, and energy systems still need storage, grids and backup capacity to make heavy use of weather-dependent power. But each geopolitical shock raises the premium on energy sources that do not have to pass through maritime chokepoints. The case for clean power is becoming a combined argument about cost, carbon and sovereignty.