The Iran war pushed countries toward clean energy — and coal

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The war in Iran has pushed the world toward clean energy. It has also pushed the world toward coal.

The International Energy Agency has reversed its projection that global coal demand would decline this year. It now expects coal consumption to rise 1.2% from 2025 to a new record high.

When the U.S. and Israel attacked Iran in late February, the global trade of oil and liquefied natural gas through the Strait of Hormuz ground nearly to a halt. Prices for the fossil fuels spiked as a result — particularly in Europe and Asia — and set off a clamor for cheaper alternatives.

Consumers and businesses flocked to electric vehicles and clean energy. Governments warmed to nuclear energy. And some countries burned more coal.

The bump in coal consumption is not a pleasant development. Coal is the single biggest source of the planet-warming greenhouse gas emissions that have propelled the world past multiple new temperature records this year alone. Dealing with climate change means quitting coal.

But here’s the good news: The sprint toward carbon-free technologies might be happening fast enough to offset the effect of that extra coal use. Global fossil-fuel emissions are set to decline ever so slightly this year, per a new Carbon Brief analysis — mainly because soaring oil prices are putting a damper on consumption of the fuel.

China provides the clearest example of this dynamic. Even as the nation’s coal use ticked up, its overall emissions fell by 1% in the second quarter compared to a year prior, as its use of oil for transportation plummeted 16% and EV adoption reached record levels. Most new cars sold in China last month were EVs or plug-in hybrids.

Other countries hit new EV adoption records, too, from Australia to Indonesia to several European nations. The IEA now expects oil demand to remain more or less flat next year, despite having forecast a substantial rise as recently as June.

The question is whether these two trends — the simultaneous embrace of coal and of clean technologies — have equivalent staying power.

That’s unlikely to be the case. The return to coal is a story of countries using the infrastructure they already have to mute the effects of an acute energy emergency. The rise of renewables and EVs is a story about building new things in response to a crisis: consumers buying new clean cars and companies or people installing new solar and storage. The crisis will eventually fade — and thus the impetus for burning more coal — but that new cleantech will remain.