LEILA FADEL, HOST:

Global oil prices have now fallen since their highs when the Iran war began. But those high prices had a lasting impact. And energy watchers say it’s accelerated the transition from oil and gas to renewable energy and electric vehicles. We’re joined now by NPR’s energy and climate solutions correspondent Julia Simon to talk about this. Good morning, Julia.

JULIA SIMON, BYLINE: Good morning, Leila.

FADEL: So why do researchers see this war as so important in the global energy story?

SIMON: You know, this recent war really laid bare the precarity of fossil fuels. Iran effectively shut the Strait of Hormuz, which cut off oil and natural gas supplies. Prices obviously shot up. And, Leila, this is the second time in four years that you’re seeing this kind of major supply and price shock, the first being the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Meanwhile, you have countries turning to these technologies that are basically impervious to whatever happens in the Strait of Hormuz, those being solar batteries and electric vehicles.

FADEL: So countries aren’t just going back to fossil fuel imports?

SIMON: Yeah. The reason that many countries aren’t just going back to the same old fossil fuel imports is energy security. Many countries that import oil and natural gas feel like if a fossil fuel energy crisis happens again, they don’t want to be vulnerable to it. India is one example. Kaushik Deb leads the India team at the University of Chicago’s Energy Policy Institute. He says, in India, they don’t want to rely on imported energy.

KAUSHIK DEB: What this crisis is doing is kind of creating the need for this energy transition to happen much faster. And this is where the transformation to electric in the transportation side or increasing the share of renewables in the electricity grid is kind of so, so, so central.