In response to the Iran crisis now impacting energy markets throughout the world, the International Energy Agency (IEA) has advised, among other things, that governments develop policies to encourage more working from home, limit commutes, and lower speed limits. The 10-point plan intends to reduce demand in order to mitigate an increasingly likely energy shock of the kind seen in 1973 and 1979. But the intervention also resonates with a more recent historical crisis: the Covid-19 lockdowns.

In any event, the IEA offers a somewhat daft series of recommendations. It is typically the cost that elicits behavioral change and reduces demand. Telling drivers to operate their vehicles “more efficiently” or to “avoid air travel” is just condescending, given that prices for fuel and flights are likely to multiply. And some of it may be self-defeating. Point nine, for example, suggests “encouraging electric cooking” to “reduce reliance on LPG”. Though this recommendation is aimed at developing countries — Indonesia is singled out in the IEA’s report — this advice forgets that gas is used in the production of electricity and is just 50% or less efficient. What is saved by way of LPG imports may be lost through LNG imports.

But another factor is likely to make guidance from any part of the establishment less well-received than intended. The vulnerability of energy supplies transiting the Strait of Hormuz has hardly been an under-covered issue. There were energy shocks in 2008 and in 2022. Yet the IEA and the UK government continued to double down on the Net Zero agenda. Did they not see something like this coming?

The UK government came to power pledging no new North Sea oil and gas licenses, and in November moved to formalize a ban hailed by Greenpeace as a “historic victory”. Ed Miliband’s Clean Power 2030 agenda promises escape from volatile global markets and hostile regimes. Yet scrapping coal has increased reliance on gas, with demand curbed largely by high prices and deindustrialization. Wind and solar may one day deliver security, but until they do at scale and at low cost, the policy weakens it.

But Miliband is hardly alone. After the last energy shock, all parties backed windfall taxes on North Sea producers. Earlier, in the wake of the War on Terror and the 2008 crash, they passed the Climate Change Act, dismantling domestic capacity without a clear replacement. Fracking was halted before it began. And even as a harsher geopolitical order emerged and high prices eroded industry, politicians still waved through Net Zero, cheered on by bodies like the IEA in 2019.

It was not difficult to see that regions that have previously triggered energy shocks could quickly descend into chaos again. Thus, any headfirst dive into green policy ought to have been calibrated against the possibility of shortage. It was the IEA’s job to foresee and mitigate such things. It was instead blinded by green ideology.