A wind turbine at the Port of Arinaga on Gran Canaria Island, Spain, in 2022. Renewable energy sources often generate close to 60 per cent of Spain’s electricity.BORJA SUAREZ/Reuters
Shortly after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, the Kremlin devised what was, in effect, a civilian terrorism campaign. Its drones and missiles regularly wreaked havoc on Ukraine’s electricity system by taking out coal-burning plants.
Almost all of the plants owned by DTEK, the country’s biggest private power generator, were destroyed or damaged within two years; Ukrainians froze in the dark. DTEK’s response was a surprise. The company not only embarked on round-the-clock repairs, but also launched an ambitious campaign to build wind farms.
DTEK’s Tyligulska project on the Black Sea coast, only 100 kilometres from the front lines, would become the first wind farm built during a war. When the second phase is finished later this year, the turbines will generate enough power for 900,000 homes.
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Don’t for a second, however, think that Ukraine was motivated to reduce its carbon footprint as Russia was blowing its cities apart. The project is part of the strategic defence plan. Wind farms are hard to destroy completely, since the turbines are widely dispersed, and they don’t rely on imported oil, natural gas or coal, whose supply lines can be shut down. Russia has attacked the wind farm a few times, but it’s failed to inflict a lot of damage. Most of the blades are still spinning.
Which brings us to the United States.
Under Donald Trump, the U.S. has been aggressively rolling back its green agenda, making the world’s biggest economy ever more reliant on fossil fuels, as if the President’s goal is to create a petrostate.
To a lesser extent, Canada and the European Union are doing the same, partly because they are taking their lead from Mr. Trump, who is a climate-change-denying oil-firster, and partly because of the mistaken belief that a hydrocarbon economy creates jobs, or at least preserves existing ones, and that cleantech manufacturing does the opposite.
Mr. Trump also apparently did not believe that global oil and liquefied natural gas deliveries could be turned off by war. If he had, perhaps he, with Israel riding shotgun, would not have bombed Iran, a major OPEC producer and the country that controls the Strait of Hormuz, through which 20 per cent of the world’s oil and LNG flows on tanker ships.
Iran – short of fighter jets, anti-aircraft systems and a navy – resorted to economic weapons to retaliate. The outcome has been devastating for the U.S. and its allies in the oil- and gas-rich Persian Gulf. Iran shut Hormuz and used bombs and missiles to attack nearby oil and LNG plants, including those in Qatar, the world’s second-biggest LNG producer.
An oil tanker in Muscat, Oman, on March 12. The Strait of Hormuz remains effectively closed.Benoit Tessier/Reuters
Europe’s benchmark gas prices have climbed by 65 per cent since the U.S. and Israel launched their attacks on Feb. 28. Brent crude, the international oil benchmark, traded Friday at US$108 a barrel; the price was below US$60 in December. Inflation is set to take off again and any hope that central bankers in Western countries will drop interest rates has vanished. Americans are paying a buck more for a gallon of gasoline than they did a month ago. The affordability crisis that Mr. Trump vowed to fix is not going away any time soon, even if he stops bombing Iran.
The chief executive officer of QatarEnergy, the world’s second-largest LNG producer, said this week that Iranian attacks had knocked out 17 per cent of the company’s export capacity and that repairs will sideline almost 13 million tonnes of LNG a year for three to five years.
The U.S. and other countries that cut their bets on renewable and nuclear energy (as Germany foolishly did) paid the price. There is no energy crisis in the countries that are least exposed to energy produced by hydrocarbons, even if they could not escape the full impact of the price increases triggered by Hormuz’s closure.
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Electricity prices in Spain are far lower than those in Germany and Italy, two countries highly reliant on gas to keep the lights on. That’s because renewable energy sources (wind, solar and hydro) often generate close to 60 per cent of Spain’s electricity, while nuclear provides about 20 per cent. In France, nuclear plants provide about 70 per cent of the electricity, with renewables putting out much of the rest.
Mr. Trump seems bent on doubling down on his anti-renewables campaign. Federal tax credits for electric vehicles are gone; those for clean energy are being rolled back. Federal fuel-efficiency mandates are being diluted. He has ordered the U.S. Department of Defence to use more coal power. And so on.
Any country that follows this pro-oil agenda exposes itself to the effects of the President’s bomb-first-ask-questions-later geopolitical escapades. Hormuz at its narrowest point is only 33 kilometres across, yet Iran’s effective blockade has delivered an energy shock to most of the world. Ukraine figured out that wind farms have no supply chain risk in times of war.