Six months after US-Israeli strikes disrupted Middle Eastern fossil fuel production and turned the Strait of Hormuz into a naval battleground, the world is getting a fuller picture of how the Iran war has reshaped the economics of energy.
A handful of new reports show how, by dramatically raising fossil fuel prices, the conflict has also been pushing governments, companies and consumers towards renewable energy, with a clear set of winners and losers emerging.
Global fossil fuel importers have paid more than $330 billion in extra costs — an amount equal to Finland’s 2025 gross domestic product — since the war began on Feb. 28, according to data from the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air (CREA), a Helsinki-based nonprofit. Meanwhile, higher energy prices have been a boon to a handful of oil- and-gas producing countries outside the war zone. Economies that had moved to ditch fossil fuels prior to the war have withstood the crisis better, too.
These transformations could eventually have an effect on the environment: Overall, global greenhouse gas emissions were relatively contained during the first half of the year, inching up just 0.2% compared with the same period a year earlier, according to an early analysis of emissions through mid-year 2026 by the nonprofit Climate Trace.
“Renewables continue to grow. That does seem like good news,” said Ting So, lead analyst for Climate Trace. But he added that the volatility of disruptions in the Strait of Hormuz makes it hard to predict long-term trends.
The winners
China has emerged as a beneficiary of the realignment, leveraging its dominance in green technology manufacturing at a time when soaring oil and gas prices are boosting interest in solar panels, batteries and electric vehicles.
The losers
In the Persian Gulf, drone strikes and explosions have damaged key facilities, including Saudi Arabia’s largest oil refinery and a key liquefied natural gas export terminal in Qatar. Coupled with shipping bottlenecks, initial export losses across the Gulf averaged nearly $2 billion per day in March, according to an estimate from Rice University.
Fears that this year’s energy-market disruptions would lead to a major near-term increase in coal-fired power did not become a reality. Instead, over the first six months of the year, renewable energy actually expanded more quickly, So says.