2026-05-05
The current Middle East Crisis impacts on Australia’s energy security and resilience to supply chain shocks. The Greens have policies to accelerate the clean energy transition, especially in the transport sector (which is currently most vulnerable to Middle East instability).
Rob Delves is a member of the Green Issue Editorial team
The fossil fuel industry and the political right are using the current energy crisis to mount a very aggressive, emotional attack on renewables and promote increased production of fossil fuels including becoming more self-sufficient in producing and refining our own oil. One example was a recent Spotlight program on channel 7 where Liam Bartlett mocked Chris Bowen’s “foolish decisions” to close coal-fired power stations and rely on wind and solar. Some examples of his language:
“If the war with Iran has done nothing else, it’s given us all a real-world, real-time lesson in what truly runs our lives….A brutal reminder of which fuels actually matter and what government must do to protect the chain of supply and hence the livelihoods of its people.”
Such arguments reek of the desperation of a threatened industry to prey on community fears to revive support for fossil fuels. However, there is one important and uncomfortable truth in their argument: Australia still remains a predominantly fossil fuel economy, relying overwhelmingly on fossil fuels for our energy needs, most spectacularly in the transport sector. And that does leave our essential energy supply chains vulnerable to disruption whenever conflict explodes in the Middle East and often elsewhere in the world.
I would argue that The Greens have three important “policy areas” we should promote heavily in response to justified fears about energy security and resilience when faced with external wars and other disruptions.
The first is to accelerate the clean energy transition.
Wind, solar and storage technologies were developed decades ago, but remained small because they couldn’t compete on cost, so the only argument that their proponents could use were environmental: clean, healthy, low carbon. That has now changed as their costs have fallen relentlessly – to the point where they are now clearly the cheapest form of energy. Since the 1970s, the price of solar panels has fallen 99.9%, while the cost of wind has fallen 91% since 1984. Battery prices have fallen 99% since 1991. Consequently, nearly all new energy investment irrespective of policy is in renewables and storage, rather than fossil fuels.
And now it’s becoming obvious that we can add a third and very important line of argument for the urgency of the clean energy transition: security and reliability. For years, fossil fuel advocates promoted oil, gas and coal as “reliable” energy. With the decline of Australia’s oil reserves and the closure of our refining capacity, that narrative has been reversed. It is our fossil fuel supply chains that have been shown to be extremely vulnerable to global shocks such as the Ukraine war and the current Middle East crisis, while sunshine and wind don’t even know that the Middle East exists. Despite the efforts of the oil and gas industry and their media cheerleaders, this crisis may be an irreversible tipping point for clean energy, adding the crucial third factor of security to its environmental and cost advantages. People witness price hikes at the bowser while their neighbours with EVs charging at home are unaffected.
But the Middle East isn’t the only threat to our energy security: The Greens also make the case that solar-wind-storage is the best solution for making us more resilient to the threat to electricity supply posed by floods, storms, heatwaves and bushfires turbocharged by global heating. In this regard it is the fact that wind, solar and storage are widely distributed as small generators spread across our rooftops, plus larger wind and solar farms supported by battery storage.
The Greens have well-researched, costed policies to make home solar and storage systems and home electrification more affordable for lower-income people. These will accelerate the transition by making the technologies more widely accessible. They add an important social justice element to our energy policy.
The second is to increase the focus on clean energy transport systems
In Australia until very recently, progress on greening transport has been much slower than in the stationary energy sector. However, the technologies for all forms of road transport are now well-developed.
Despite a very slow start compared to European countries, in the last few years, our electric vehicle sales have taken off. A large part of this is due to the rapid improvement in cost and efficiency of EVs mainly thanks to the Chinese. And of course the recent disruption to petrol and diesel supplies caused by the Middle East crisis has turbocharged interest in EVs. In Australia, petrol prices surged almost 50% in March, and diesel more than 70%. So new and second-hand EV sales reached an all-time high. We can also see the beginnings of a rapid transition towards electric trucks and other heavy vehicles, including the sizeable mine machinery fleet.
Surely it is now self-evident that investing in vehicles that run on Australian sunshine and wind – rather than imported oil – is one of the most effective ways to insulate our economy from global conflict. Private investors are clearly getting that message.
In addition, there are things government can do to enhance the uptake of EV’s even further. More investment in “petrol-station style” charging infrastructure is a no-brainer, but we should make use of the obvious advantage of electricity – it is able to create charging points just about everywhere. For example, we should use public investment to help create EV charging points in workplace car parks (two years ago, Parliament House proudly opened a few for the chariots of its hard-working MPs).
We should also advocate for much stronger fuel efficiency and emissions standards so Australian vehicles no longer lag the world. To encourage the transition to electric buses and trucks, we need to start building megawatt charging stations and/or battery swapping sites, ideally combined with solar and local battery storage.
We can also accelerate vehicle-to-grid adoption to take advantage of the fact that EVs (large and small) are very mobile storage systems that could be called upon to support the grid, including during supply shocks.
Government can make EV’s more attractive with its design of road taxes and fuel taxes. In that regard, The Greens question the sense of cutting the fuel excise to make petrol and diesel cheaper during a crisis. Our fuel excise is already much lower than in most European countries.
The third is to argue that we can live very well indeed, while using much less energy.
Energy efficiency and self-sufficiency via solar and battery storage means that you are more resilient to energy supply shocks. If the way you live requires much less energy use, you can still function reasonably well if some of those energy supplies are knocked out.
Governments can do a lot. The Greens already have a wide range of policies to make life less expensive and more healthy and pleasant and these all have one added advantage: they enable us to enjoy a comfortable standard of living while using much less energy. I would put these policies under two headings: smarter urban design and smarter home design.
Smarter urban design creates cities where private car use is much reduced because the design enables people to get to all the places they need, mostly by the cheaper and much lower energy use options of walking and cycling (including e-transport), supported by electric public transport. Brad Pettitt has done a lot of work on how to achieve this in Perth.
The concept of the 15-minute city draws all of these ideas together. One of its earliest and most compelling advocates was the wonderful New York journalist and mum, Jane Jacobs, in her famous 1960 book The Death and life of Great American Cities. Based on years of keen observation of how life unfolded around her Greenwich Village apartment, she argued that the walkability and vibrant street-life arose from high-medium density housing, mixed uses, rectangular grid street design with wide footpaths, narrow streets, short blocks, plenty of parks and other public places.
OK for 19th Century-built inner-city parts of New York that have largely resisted the automobile onslaught you might say, but what about other cities? For example, try getting to everywhere you need to go in any day in Perth in 15 minutes from your home.
Well, Paris used to be a very car-friendly city but it has taken huge strides towards becoming a 15-minute city – ripping out major roads, widening footpaths, creating more green spaces and expanding bicycle use.
We can at least take important steps towards this smarter urban design. Until now the appeal has been saving lots of money, creating more attractive streetscapes and leading a healthier and more environmentally-friendly lifestyle. Let’s hope that one positive outcome of the horrors of the Middle East crisis is to add energy security and resilience to those arguments.
Smarter home design firstly means buildings that remain at a comfortable temperature without needing much artificial heating and cooling. Part of that good design is planting many more well-placed shady trees and other types of greening of the city’s buildings and streets. It also means much better matching of dwellings with what we know about the current and likely future of household sizes. Why are we still building some of the world’s biggest 4 bedroom-2 bathroom homes that might have made at least a miniscule of sense for the typical post-World War II household of two parents and three or four children? Today a household of one or two people is more typical – surely a one bedroom home of less than 100 square metres is a better match. At least give people that choice of a lower-cost, more energy-efficient design.
Header photo: Residential suburban rooftops with photovoltaic solar panels in Canberra, 2026. Credit: Benlisquare Creative Commons
[Opinions expressed are those of the author and not official policy of Greens WA]