Geopolitical conflict drives urgent need for renewable energy and EV adoption
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Elevator Pitch
Global fossil fuel supply chain disruptions due to conflict make renewables and EVs not just cheaper, but essential hedges against instability, accelerating their adoption and market growth.
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The Straits of Hormuz, through which 20% of global fossil fuels supply needs to flow, are closed; perhaps for months. It's not just gasoline prices that are about to sharply rise. LNG supplies are just as affected. In many places, notably Europe, this will sharply increase electricity prices. Renewables and EVs were booming before; now they'll have even more advantages. It's not just that they'll be cheaper; they'll also come to be seen as a hedge against global instability and conflict.
China, the major global producer of solar/batteries/EVs, will have even more incentive to abandon fossil fuels. The rest of the world will have even more incentive to buy from them.
There's still a contingent of people who think renewables/EVs are 'woke' or for 'do-gooders'; they're about to get a practical lesson in economics and cold hard cash, when they see other people paying a fraction of what they are to power their cars and homes.
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From the Reddit thread(12 top comments)
- 57·Reddit commenter·1mo ago
Home solar and batteries are taking off in Ireland. EVs too. Huge savings even here with our climate.
permalink ↗ - 49·Reddit commenter·1mo ago
This writing has been on the wall for this for decades, which is precisely why the oil-producing states - America among them - have been doing everything they can to stop EVs from disrupting their cash flow. However, the fact remains that opting out of American-influenced car culture is an uphill climb for the average person in a car-centric city; the same attacks made against EVs have also been waged against public transit, which can also be electrified more easily, and more recently against work-from-home that nullifies the need for a commute. The best case for investment for those skittis…
permalink ↗ - 22·Reddit commenter·1mo ago
Trump really is doing his best to make sure EVs and renewable energy succeeds. Jokes aside, I think you’re right. It’ll sting but it’s probably for the best. I just hope Canada keeps up and doesn’t fall for the same propaganda. Not getting my hopes up, looking at you Alberta, but we are doing better than I thought we would be.
permalink ↗ - 8·Reddit commenter·1mo ago
As someone that drives an EV, I was thinking the same exact thing when I was coming home from some training this weekend and noticed that Price had already gone up Saturday afternoon
permalink ↗ - 8·Reddit commenter·1mo ago·reply
>> conflict over rare earth minerals will increase. I'm not sure that's true. Despite their name, rare earth minerals are not that rare. China's cornered the market mainly because it was willing to invest in their (often dirty) mining and processing. Other countries could replicate this, they don't need to fight China for some theoretical finite supply.
permalink ↗ - 8·Reddit commenter·1mo ago·reply
I mean we already have a lot of electric buses running around, I'm not sure about other places but I'd say about half the public buses here are electric or hybrid, so i didn't think it would be impossible to get the rest to be electric in a few more years
permalink ↗ - 7·Reddit commenter·1mo ago·reply
The thing is, car centric cities are largely a North American phenomenon. In much of the world cars are only really required for rural living as most countries have the sense to actually have public transit and city zoning that considers that there isn’t enough space for everyone to drive everywhere every day.
permalink ↗ - 6·Reddit commenter·1mo ago
On the surface this makes sense. Oil disruptions have happened many times before, and all that ends up happening is oil companies make fatter profits and people fall in line with higher prices. China needs to push their diplomatic advantage and convince governments to buy into solar nationally. Can't trust any oil producing nation to do what's right, and that includes the US.
permalink ↗ - 6·Reddit commenter·1mo ago·reply
>>EVs have been dying for months now. No, the exact opposite is true. Global EV Sales Reached 20.7 Million Units in 2025, Growing by 20% on 2024's figures. [SOURCE](https://evinfo.net/2026/01/global-ev-sales-reached-20-7-million-units-in-2025-growing-by-20/?) More than 1 in 4 cars sold worldwide this year is set to be electric. [SOURCE](https://www.iea.org/news/more-than-1-in-4-cars-sold-worldwide-this-year-is-set-to-be-electric-as-ev-sales-continue-to-grow?)
permalink ↗ - 6·Reddit commenter·1mo ago·reply
An EV running on electricity produced with fossil fuels is still about twice as efficient in "converting fuel to miles-driven" as an internal-combustion-engine vehicle. So the EV already has half the fuel consumption and half the CO2 generation, and gets better as the electric company works to reduce its fossil-fuel use.
permalink ↗ - 6·Reddit commenter·1mo ago
Thankfully the winter is by and large over and LNG prices will not have that big of an impact in summer as the grid will be ruled by nuclear and renewables mostly, at least in many places in Europe. But... winter again will be coming and we need to fill up the storage again. Yeah, sadly the transition takes time and batteries are not there yet to cover for long spells when renewables cannot provide energy so there will still be days when it will sting... But there is also CO2 price we pay in EU which is like 1/3 of price of electricity from gas, so it could be removed temporarily if it came t…
permalink ↗ - 6·Reddit commenter·1mo ago·reply
The opposition to WFH really puzzles me. So, I did a quick fact check and found that 14% work from home exclusively but that when "hybrid" arrangements are taken into consideration, 35% of employed people do some or all of their work from home. Google search reports that 26% of jobs are exclusively remote, 52% are hybrid and 21% are exclusively "on-site". All together, that's a lot of jobs and people working remotely. But still and all, there seems to be a lot of opposition to remote work and a lot of companies that are trying to get people back into on-site work. I honestly don't understan…
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