Clean power as an energy security issue

Perhaps it's not much, but maybe something good might come out of the US-Israeli war on Iran.

Spooked by the precipitous increase in oil and has prices, Britain's biggest energy company, Octopus Energy, has already seen a 50% rise in solar panel sales in the few weeks since the war started, as well as a spike in heat pumps and enquiries about electric vehicles and chargers.

Now, the UK is introducing new rules to the effect that all new homes built there (from 2028) must be installed with heat pumps and solar panels. In addition, plug-in solar panels are to be widely available in stores in Britain. The idea is to avoid being held hostage by the globalized oil and gas market, as is happening in the aftermath of the Iran war, and to move closer to "energy sovereignty" for the country. 

Something very similar is happening in Europe, which is seeing a wave of increased interested in solar power. Ditto, Australia, which had all but given up on its ambitious target of 82% renewables by 2030, until a huge surge in household solar and battery installations since the US-Iran war.

All this thanks to anti-renewables Donald Trump and his misguided Iran war?

Well, partly. The last time there was an oil crunch of this magnitude, in the 1970s, there were few practical alternatives available. This time there are viable substitutes, powerful and cheap enough to build at scale, and many countries are looking towards that off-ramp, bringing in long-overdue policies that will stand them in good stead decades into the future.

Hey, maybe we could do that here too, here in sunny Canada? Ah, no, Alberta would never allow that!