By Laura Paddison, Ella Nilsen, CNN
(CNN) — The Iranian blockade of the Strait of Hormuz has shown how easy it is to for one country to turn geography into a ferocious weapon with devastating global impacts. It also reveals a truth about the dangers of a fossil fuel-powered global energy system: It’s heavily reliant on a handful of narrow maritime chokepoints, all in volatile regions.
The Strait is a narrow passage of deep, dark-blue water that tracks along Iran’s arid, mountainous southern coastline and transports round a fifth of world’s oil and gas.
The impacts of its effective closure have unfolded swiftly, sending energy prices soaring and shockwaves through the global economy. It’s led to fuel shortages and rationing and fears of a global recession.
But if the global energy system were powered primarily by wind, solar and batteries, rather than oil and gas, would a similar war trigger the same levels of disruption?
Experts say there’s a key difference between the two: Fossil fuels depend on continuous shipments of oil and gas; any disruption cuts off energy supply immediately. In contrast, clean energy supply chains are centered on the transportation of equipment — not the energy itself.
Relying on imported oil “is like relying on a drug dealer — you have to keep going back again and again,” said Li Shuo, director of the China climate hub at the Asia Society Policy Institute. “Importing solar panels is more like relying on a car dealer: once you’ve made the purchase, you’re set for the next two decades.”
Fragile lifelines
The question of how a world run on renewables could be different occupies Clement Sefa-Nyarko, a lecturer at the African Leadership Centre at King’s College London, who focuses on natural resources. To understand those differences means understanding how the current global energy system is structured, he said.
The Strait of Hormuz, the main export route for oil produced by Gulf states, is arguably the most vital corridor for oil and gas because few alternatives exist. The world is “80% dependent on fossil fuel, about 25% of that passes through a single chokepoint, and that is a problem,” Sefa-Nyarko said.
But Hormuz is not the only bottleneck. As the Middle East conflict escalates, there are fears for another, this one in the Red Sea.
The Bab el-Mandeb Strait, which links the Suez Canal and Red Sea to the Gulf of Aden, transports around 6% of the world’s sea-borne traded oil and has long been unstable. A wave of attacks in 2023 by Iran-backed Houthi militants forced ships to re-route around South Africa’s Cape of Good Hope. Now, concerns are growing Houthis might seek to block off access once more.
Other narrow sea corridors are not affected by the Middle East conflict but still face risks. The Strait of Malacca, a narrow passage linking the Indian and Pacific Oceans, is the largest chokepoint in the world in terms of maritime oil transport and is known for piracy and robbery. Incidents of both reached a 19-year high in 2025, with more than 130 cases reported, according to a report by ReCAAP Information Sharing Centre.
Independent research company Rystad identified a total of five oil and gas chokepoints — which also include the Turkish Straits and the Cape of Good Hope — which it called the “fragile lifelines” of the global energy system, in a 2025 report.
Disruption of any of these leaves the world exceptionally vulnerable. Countries that import oil and gas are “very much reliant on a continuous flow of energy,” said Vegard Wiik Vollset, head of renewables and power research at Rystad. When that’s disrupted supply chains can shatter, prices soar and people face deep economic pain.
A little breathing room
Clean energy, however, works very differently.
The big contrast is where energy comes from, Sefa-Nyarko said. With renewables, once the infrastructure is built — solar farms set up and wind turbines hoisted into place — all that’s required is sun or wind, and that’s domestic.
Once installed, it can provide energy for decades. If the same war broke out in a world dominated by wind and solar, electricity production would largely be insulated, said Sefa-Nyarko. Electric car drivers would not fear soaring gas pump prices, homes fitted with heat pumps and electric stoves wouldn’t see energy bill spikes and governments would be less exposed to soaring inflation and the need to ration or subsidize fuels.
“An electrified grid is inherently more resilient,” said Antoine Vagneur-Jones, head of trade and supply chains at research group BloombergNEF.
That’s not to say there aren’t some clean energy chokepoints; they’re just different and less likely to trigger immediate economic shocks, Sefa-Nyarko said.
Solar panels, wind turbines and batteries need key minerals such as cobalt, lithium, graphite and rare earth elements. And while these don’t have to pass through a handful of narrow shipping channels, there is one country with a near stranglehold on the supply chain: China.
China mines a lot of minerals, but its real dominance is in processing. Lithium for batteries, for example, is mined all over the world — including Australia, Chile, China and Zimbabwe — but more than 70% of the processing happens in China. The Democratic Republic of Congo has around 70% of the world’s deposits of cobalt, used in batteries and wind turbine magnets, but China processes about 80%.
It has also cornered the global clean tech market. “China has the cheapest product and the most advanced technology,” said Yana Hryshko, a senior research analyst at energy firm Wood Mackenzie. It produces more than 90% of the world’s polysilicon, wafers and photovoltaic cells — key ingredients to make solar panels.
And China isn’t afraid to flex its dominance. When the US threatened tariffs in 2025, China, which mines around 60% of rare earths and processes 90%, slapped export restrictions on many of them. “The US immediately had to come back to the negotiation table,” said Sefa-Nyarko.
Yet, even if China severely restricted exports, it would not produce the same extreme global shock and impact on prices as strangling oil and gas, because it won’t cut off the daily flow of energy supply, said Rystad’s Vollset.
It could eventually affect is countries’ ability to build more infrastructure, which could prove damaging in the longer-term if restrictions are prolonged and countries don’t pivot and build up their own manufacturing. “There will be a point where supply will be disrupted, even if you can absorb that, maybe for a year, two years, you can’t go far beyond that,” said Sefa-Nyarko.
Efforts are already underway to build more resilient supply chains for critical materials, which are also crucial for defense and electronics. Countries including the US and India are starting to build their own solar manufacturing industries, although China’s products remain the cheapest; a recent IEA report found solar costs in China are 10% lower than in India, 20% lower than in the United States, and 35% lower than in Europe.
Other efforts include recycling minerals already in circulation and developing alternative technologies to reduce critical mineral reliance, such as sodium batteries, which don’t require lithium.
It’s too soon to know whether the current conflict will push more countries to double down on renewables and electrification, but Vagneur-Jones expects more will. “We typically see things continue to accelerate and expand in the pace of deployment” in the years following the shock, he said.
There is no perfect global energy solution devoid of chokepoints, vulnerabilities and geopolitical tensions, Sefa-Nyarko said. “We cannot delude in ourselves and think that renewables will be the silver bullet,” he added. But the current crisis shines a giant spotlight on the fragility of an economic system where global stability is inherently tied to the uninterrupted flow of oil.
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