Countries must seek energy independence through renewables and nuclear, says John Kerry | US-Israel war on Iran
Former US secretary of state John Kerry has warned that countries must seek energy independence through renewables and nuclear power for their own national security and avoid “chokepoints” in fossil fuel supplies.
The war in Iran caused oil prices to rise due to the closure of refineries and fields in many Middle Eastern countries and the stranding of many tankers in the Strait of Hormuz; The economic effects began to be felt worldwide.
“The takeaway here is that it has once again highlighted the extent to which fuel (especially oil and gas) is a security issue. Energy independence is even more important going forward, because you don’t want to be caught up in a bottleneck or have your economy majorly disrupted as a result,” he told the Guardian.
Kerry said that the US-Israeli-led war in Iran is not an oil war “per se” and is not based on competition for oil resources, but that the conflict has revealed the dependence on oil that makes many developed economies fragile.
“The lesson we learned here in the early days was that people said, ‘Wow, how are we not going to be dependent on other countries for our energy?’ “He started to understand the question,” he said. “They all now understand what these bottlenecks mean for economic sustainability. We must be more aggressive in our transition.” [to clean energy]Definitely.”
He said China launched this strategy in 2019 and was moving at “astonishing speed” to eliminate its dependence on fossil fuels in favor of renewable energy.
He suggested that the economic and national security impacts of the oil shock could do more than calls for climate action to quickly push the world towards clean energy. “In the 1970s, there was a major disruption with the oil embargo, which accelerated the transition to other energy sources. On the other hand, there was a recession in the 1990s. [situation] “Where the climate challenge is starting to take root and people are setting goals and targets, things haven’t moved as fast as they did when it was based on security,” he said.
Kerry also argued that countries should build new nuclear power plants, including “small modular reactors,” to meet low-carbon energy needs, including new AI data centres. “The resurgence of interest in nuclear is very evident and very important,” he said.
He said both renewable energy sources and nuclear energy can meet these needs without the need for fossil fuel support. “The economic choice is so compelling for people now that you can make your bottom line much better by using these new technologies. [AI] The data center will need as much energy as a small city in various locations, and we need to meet these needs. “There has been some avoidance of the truth about the choices people face to meet this demand.”
He warned that countries are lining up to become electro-states or petro-states, with the former having greater national security and the latter facing the risk of fragility.
“We’re at the dawn of electro-states versus petro-states, and electricity is the holy grail for everyone right now. They’re going to be electrified, and people are moving in that direction very quickly,” he said. “But the future is being able to harness the power of electrons and send them where we need them, use them where and when we need them, and have smart grids that can meet these kinds of complex demands, respond to this kind of demand that occurs, and that’s going to happen on a massive scale.”
