IEA chief says Iran war will accelerate clean energy shift, but coal push tests durability
Birol's prediction faces scrutiny as Asia coal use rises and Hormuz blockade stretches past four months.
The Iran war will "profoundly transform" global energy systems and accelerate the switch to low-carbon technologies, IEA chief Fatih Birol said on Thursday (2026-05-21), with the Strait of Hormuz blockade past its fourth month and no resolution in sight.1
The scale of the disruption is hard to overstate. The conflict has removed 13 million barrels per day of oil from global markets, Birol told CNBC on Thursday (2026-05-14), calling it "the biggest energy security threat in history." The 32-member IEA agreed in March to release 400 million barrels of oil from emergency stockpiles, the largest such intervention on record.3
The renewable data Birol is drawing on are striking. Solar photovoltaics met more than 25% of global new energy demand last year, the IEA reckons, ahead of natural gas at 17%. Renewables produced 34% of the world's electricity, edging out coal at 33% for the first time in over a century.5
Annual solar generation shot up 30% to 2,778 TWh, with wind rising from 2,510 TWh to 2,715 TWh. Together with hydropower and geothermal, renewables generated nearly 11,000 TWh of power globally.5
But the conflict is testing whether that momentum survives the price shock. Birol acknowledged on Wednesday (2026-05-20) that "in some countries, I expect coal may also see a push and go back up, especially in some big countries in Asia."3
Europe appears to be holding the line. LNG supply disruption caused by the war is "unlikely to lead to any marked change in Europe's coal phase-out plans, with the wheels already well in motion," analysts told Montel on Thursday (2026-05-21).2 The European Commission's AccelerateEU plan, published on Wednesday (2026-04-22), explicitly called for more clean electricity to reduce exposure to fossil-fuel price shocks.7
Asia is a different story. Without the policy frameworks that underpin Europe's carbon market and renewable mandates, several large Asian economies have turned back to coal to plug supply gaps from the Hormuz closure. Before the war, the strait carried about 20% of the world's oil.4
"The $110 trillion global economy can be taken hostage by a couple of hundred men with guns across a 50-kilometer stretch of strait — it doesn't make sense at all," one analyst told CNBC on Wednesday (2026-05-20), capturing the security argument now driving the push for distributed renewables.4
Europe faces a more immediate supply crunch the clean-energy push cannot quickly address. Birol noted on Wednesday (2026-05-20) that the region receives about 75% of its jet fuel from Middle Eastern refineries, "and this is basically now [down to] zero."3
The Oxford Institute for Energy Studies, in a report published on Sunday (2026-05-17), framed the challenge plainly: European leaders must decide whether to engage with these risks "seriously enough, and soon enough, to shape the terms on which the energy transition actually lands."6
Oxford's reference case assumes the conflict peaked in April, with Hormuz flows recovering to above 95% of pre-crisis levels only by the fourth quarter of 2026, leaving policymakers at least six more months of disruption to navigate.6 ICE Brent crude front-month stood at $86.86 on Tuesday (2026-07-14), well off early-crisis highs. Whether Asia's coal rebound proves temporary or durable is the question Birol's clean-energy prediction has not yet settled.