Could a global economy dependent on renewable energy see less war? Experts explain

A widespread transition to renewable energy could mitigate a major cause of international conflict in a future that moves away from fossil fuels, energy and climate change experts told ABC News.

Oil is a leading cause of modern-day war –with between one-quarter and one-half of interstate wars between 1973 and 2007 linked to oil, an analysispublished in the journal International Security said.

Nearly 75% of the world’s population lives in countries that have to import fossil fuels in order to power their societies and provide basic services to people, according to EMBER, any energy think tank, based on their calculations of International Energy Agencydata.

Due to the global economy’s dependence on fossil fuels, international conflicts can arise from resource competition, terrorism and scarcity issues, the International Security analysis found.

In the case of the current conflict with Iran, the critical Strait of Hormuz emerged as a front in the war after the initial U.S and Israeli attacks, with Iran closing off the shipping route, sending oil prices soaring.

Overall, the tensions likely stem from the fact that fossil fuels are a finite resource that much of the world relies on to function, the experts said.

“We will run out of them, so that creates scarcity,” Drew Shula, founder and CEO of sustainability consulting firm Verdical Group and founder of the Net Zero Conference, the largest annual net zero event, told ABC News.

The war with Iran, and the disruption to energy markets caused by the shutdown of the Strait of Hormuz, should trigger nations to a swifter exit from fossil fuel dependence, Simon ⁠Stiell, executive secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, told Reuters in an interview on Monday.

“If there was ever a moment to accelerate that energy transition, ​breaking dependencies which have shackled economies, this is the time,” Stiell said.

That transition will also have to be handled with care, since the resources required for the production of renewable energy aren’t limitless and, in some cases, are sourced in unstable parts of the world, experts noted.

Transition to renewables could have unintended positive outcomes

The idea that oil presents security risks was proposed as early as 1976, when physicist Amory Lovins proposed a pivotal shift in U.S. energy policy in favor of energy efficiency.

Climate change has become a “growing flashpoint” for conflict among countries because fossil fuel resources are dwindling and some areas of the world are becoming increasingly unlivable, Kate Guy, a senior fellow at the Columbia Center of Global Energy Policy, told ABC News.

The main purpose of the green transition to renewable energy is to decarbonize economies and drastically reduce the use of fossil fuels that are driving global warming. Fossil fuels are responsible for up to 68% of greenhouse gas emissions and 90% of carbon dioxide emissions, the United Nations notes.

An unexpected benefit of a greener economy could also be greater peace, as the transition to renewables may mean less opportunity for conflict to emerge between countries over dwindling fossil fuel resources, Erin Sikorsky, director at the Center for Climate & Security at The Council on Strategic Risks, a nonprofit research institute, told ABC News.

Solar is the most abundant renewable energy and can even be produced in cloudy weather, according to the United Nations. It is followed by wind, geothermal and hydropower as the largest sources of green energy.

But none of these energy sources have ever sparked a major international conflict, Sikorsky said.

In the past, there was an argument to be made that conflict was the “price we pay” for obtaining the energy needed to power society, Stephen Porder, a professor of Ecology, Evolutionary and Organismal Biology and Environment and Society at Brown University, told ABC News. The technological leaps of recent decades mean that is no longer the case, he noted.

“In one single container ship full of solar panels, you can ship as much energy as with 100 container ships of coal,” he said.

Global renewable power capacity reached record growth in 2024, with a 15.1 rate of growth that year, according to the International Renewable Energy Agency. But the global switch to renewables is not happening fast enough, U.N. officials announcedlast year. A fully green economy is widely considered to be years away due to infrastructure, funding and political gaps, according to the World Economic Forum.

Most countries are currently off track to meet their 2050 net-zero goals — the targets to balance greenhouse gas emissions produced with those removed from the atmosphere — according to the World Resources Institute.

Recent conflict could point to oil as a driver

The Trump administration has seized several Venezuelan oil tankers this year — even removing President Nicolas Maduro from office and detaining him in the U.S. Since then, Trump has touted plans for U.S. companies to extract and sell oil from Venezuela, which holds the largest oil reserves in the world.

While the Trump administration has stated the current conflict with Iran is about eliminating the country’s nuclear weapons, the president has not ruled out seizing Iran’s oil supplies.

“You look at Venezuela — people have thought about it, but it’s too soon to talk about that,” Trump told NBC News on March 9.

Although the U.S. and Israel likely did not initiatethe conflict with Iran over oil, Iran’s ample supplies have allowed them to fight back, according to The Council on Strategic Risks’ Sikorsky.

“Certainly, it is oil that has given Iran leverage then to push back right and has allowed them to have a stronger position in in the conflict,” Sikorsky said.

How nations have weaponized oil in the past

Historically, weaponization of oil has had major implications on global events.

The U.S., Britain and Dutch East Indiesembargoon Japan’s oil supply in July 1941 — which impacted 88% of its imported oil –preceded the attack on Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941.

The October 1973 Arab-Israeli War led to a massive oil crisis in the 1970s, in which the price skyrocketed, causing then-President Richard Nixon to take emergency measures to limit consumption.

In 1990, Iraqi President Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait, seeking to control its oil, sparking the Gulf War.

Russia also used oil to its advantage during its war with Ukraine, pivoting exports to Asia to fund the military amid European sanctions.

In the current conflict with Iran, crude oil prices have skyrocketed because Iran has closed the Strait of Hormuz, a critical passageway connecting the Persian Gulf and the Gulf of Oman through which around 20% of the world’s oil supply passes through. This is one example of the many “choke points” within the fossil fuel-powered economy, according to Columbia Center of Global Energy Policy’s Guy.

Sikorsky, from the Council on Strategic Risks, highlighted the danger this represents.

“Fossil fuels give authoritarian governments leverage,” she said.

Renewable energy presents its own tensions

The green transition does not come without its own tensions — especially as the changeover to renewable energy continues to happen swiftly, according to experts.

The critical minerals and metals needed for some of the technology that allows for the production of renewable energy — such as lithium ion batteries — are also finite and could potentially cause local tensions in places like the Democratic Republic of the Congo and China, Geoff Dabelko, professor of environmental studies at Ohio University’s Voinovich School of Leadership and Public Service, told ABC News.

Given the mercurial relations between the U.S. and China as the world’s two largest superpowers, Columbia Center of Global Energy Policy fellow Guy noted that the local tensions could spill onto the international stage.

“Much of that know-how and innovation is within Chinese hands now,” she said. “So, certainly, people have pointed to that as a potential security risk in the great power competition.”

In addition, 80% of the world’s solar panels are manufactured in China and production has been tied to allegations of forced labor and coal power, Morgan Bazilian, professor of public policy and director of the Colorado School of Mines’ Payne Institute, told ABC News.

Climate change is now widely considered a “threat multiplier,” with resource scarcity among the key mechanisms of conflict. Until the world no longer relies so heavily on fossil fuels, conflicts stemming from the control of oil will continue, the experts said.

However, decarbonization is not the priority for most governments or the people in conflict zones today, Bazilian noted.

“These wars are not about climate change and not about energy,” he said. “The main concern is human life, dignity, survival.”