The real chokepoint isn’t the strait, it's oil

With preliminary US–Iran talks having concluded in Switzerland on Monday and a peace deal now anticipated, oil prices have fallen and world leaders are reverting to the narrative of "business-as-usual" – the most egregious expression of which is US President Donald Trump's "Let the oil flow!"

We need an end to this conflict – a complete and permanent one. But there's no going back to "lives-as-usual." The human cost of this war, and the global cost of living crisis it has triggered, has been severe. Communities across the Middle East and beyond are still living under the threat of violence and the shadow of instability.

Based on the International Monetary Fund's pricing scenarios, 350.org calculates that even if the Strait of Hormuz reopens permanently, over $700bn will be siphoned from businesses and households to the oil and gas industry through continued elevated prices by year's end – as damaged infrastructure, persistent supply risks and geopolitical volatility keep fossil fuel prices above pre-crisis levels.

Even as the future looks uncertain, there are already three lessons that the Hormuz crisis has delivered with a clarity that no think-tank report, no scientific warning, and no UN communiqué has ever managed to achieve.

Lesson one: no one wants volatile fossil fuels anymore

The Hormuz crisis has done what decades of climate advocacy could not: it made energy security and climate action essentially the same argument. The contrast between turbulent global oil and gas markets and homegrown renewables is now impossible to ignore, with countries providing real-life examples.

Spain, with 57% renewable electricity, for instance, recorded the lowest energy price increases in the EU during the shock, with prices around US$50/MWh, while gas-dependent Singapore saw prices above US$200/MWh.

The Iran war has also driven solar and electric vehicle booms across the world. Households have started to realise that cheaper renewables can not only weather them through this crisis, but bring down their energy bills for good. Industry players across Europe report that demand for solar installations has more than doubled since late February, with similar trends across Asia. Worldwide, EV sales are also surging.

The crisis has permanently transformed the energy security and affordability narrative around clean technology. Renewables are no longer just a climate preference, they are a national security and economic imperative. And unlike fossil fuels, that is not just a marketing claim, but an undeniable fact.

Lesson two: fossil fuel profits during a war are a political scandal, and governments know it

The latest numbers from Oxfam calculate that the six biggest fossil fuel companies, BP, Shell, TotalEnergies, ExxonMobil, Chevron, and ConocoPhillips, are projected to earn an additional US$37 million a day in 2026 compared with 2025. While families across the world struggle with fuel bills, food price spikes, and energy poverty driven directly by this disruption, oil majors posted profits twice as high as the year before.

The political response has been swift. By April, the finance ministers of Germany, Austria, Spain, Italy, and Portugal had called for an EU-wide windfall tax, echoing the solidarity contribution that raised €28 billion from oil majors during the Ukraine energy shock. In the US, Democrat lawmakers backed by over 70 environmental groups started pushing for a windfall tax on oil majors.

But the momentum is stalling. The EU left out a windfall tax from its emergency measures and the legislative proposal in the US is not moving.

Yet, now more than ever, unearned oil revenues need to flow back to public coffers and to the people blindsided by price shocks. Simply re-opening the Hormuz Strait in no way ends the crisis for ordinary people, who will be paying for this war long after any deal is signed.

Oil and gas prices are expected to remain high for months. The war's full impact on food prices has yet to come through. People's livelihoods have been damaged. Government finances have been drained by costly fossil fuel subsidies. Meanwhile, the next crisis – in the form of El Niño – is already gathering force.

Permanent windfall taxes are badly needed at this moment to give embattled governments breathing space to help families and businesses recover, and prepare for what comes next.

Lesson three: clean, affordable energy is a right, not a privilege

We depend on energy to power our homes, hospitals and schools. We need it to travel and to work, to keep food and medicines fresh. Without energy, nothing else works.

This crisis made the reality of energy poverty and inequality so apparent, with those who need it most to survive unable to afford or access it.

Governments need to step in. Buying solar panels or an electric vehicle are out of reach for most people; they do not make a clean energy revolution. Governments must strongly back the transition in order for it to be realisable and equitable.

One clear step towards guaranteeing clean, affordable energy for all is to stop fossil fuel subsidies and subsidise renewable technologies, especially to support lower-income households and micro-enterprises. Rooftop and balcony solar, electric public transport, and free or socialised tariffs through renewables are solutions far cheaper and sustainable than spending trillions of dollars on costly fossil fuels.

Governments also need to invest – urgently and at scale – in energy systems that communities own and control, like community-owned or municipal solar, wind and storage. Clean energy should reach the people who need it most first, not last.

The UN estimates that policies supportive of renewable energy have the potential to lift 193 million people out of poverty and provide the world a cumulative savings of US$20.4 trillion. People need that relief. Governments need that money.

However, if there is another lesson that this crisis has taught us, it is that clean, affordable energy will not be willingly delivered by those who have long profited from its absence. Rather, it is a right that people will have to fight for.

The clean energy revolution won't be won simply through climate persuasion, superior technology or economics. It will be won when we finally stop treating energy as a privilege – and governments take responsibility to make sure that it reaches everyone, not just those who can afford it.

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