{"id":527814,"date":"2026-03-09T01:18:20","date_gmt":"2026-03-09T01:18:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/527814\/"},"modified":"2026-03-09T01:18:20","modified_gmt":"2026-03-09T01:18:20","slug":"us-energy-policy-expert-david-hochschild-says-donald-trumps-war-on-iran-will-undermine-his-war-on-renewables","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/527814\/","title":{"rendered":"US energy policy expert David Hochschild says Donald Trump\u2019s war on Iran will undermine his war on renewables"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Ongoing strikes on Iran will accelerate the global transition to renewable energy from fossil fuels, according to the chief of California\u2019s lead energy policy and planning agency, who is in Australia this week for meetings with industry and political leaders.<\/p>\n

Energy prices have spiked since the United States and Israel launched their attack, and Iranian retaliation closed the Strait of Hormuz, through which about a quarter of the world\u2019s oil and a fifth of the world\u2019s gas is shipped. While this will cause fossil fuel profits to surge in the short term, David Hochschild, chair of the California Energy Commission, believes it will drive nations to ramp up their efforts to achieve energy security by ramping up deployment of renewables, just as it did after Russia\u2019s attack on Ukraine.<\/p>\n

\"DavidDavid Hochschild, chair, California Energy Commission. <\/p>\n

Hochschild said this was an unintended consequence of the war launched by Trump, who domestically is focused on derailing the energy transition.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think what\u2019s going on now [is that] his mistakes in foreign policy are starting to cancel out his mistakes in energy policy, or compound them.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe volatility that we\u2019re seeing in fossil fuel projects around the world because of this war in Iran is yet another argument for renewable energy. Nations can insulate themselves from these price shocks that we\u2019re seeing by going electric and going towards renewables because there is no cost for wind and for sunlight and for geothermal heat, [and] you don\u2019t subject yourself to the volatility of fossil fuel markets,\u201d said Hochschild, who described Trump\u2019s administration as a \u201cwholly owned subsidiary of the fossil fuel industry\u201d.<\/p>\n

Hochschild, who will deliver a keynote speech at Climate Action Week Sydney on Monday along with federal Climate Change and Energy Minister Chris Bowen and NSW Environment Minister Penny Sharpe, said Trump was the most hostile president to climate action in US history, having dumped Biden-era subsidies to renewable energy technologies and sought to end construction on near-complete offshore wind projects.<\/p>\n

Related Article\"The<\/a><\/p>\n

He said US energy policy was now being drafted by the most extreme elements of the fossil fuel industry, noting that Trump had told a group of oil company executives they should donate $<\/a>US<\/a>1 billion to his campaign because in office he would roll back environmental laws restricting the industry.<\/a><\/p>\n

Hochschild said that while the administration was hampering renewables deployment in the US, critical authority lay with states, many of which, like California, were still focused on the transition. He said that California\u2019s economy had rapidly expanded as its transition progressed.<\/p>\n

\u201cTwelve years ago we were the 10th-largest economy in the world \u2026 We are now the fourth-largest economy in the world and we\u2019re at 70 per cent of our electricity on the grid coming from clean energy sources like solar and wind. We have more EV charging plugs than we have gasoline nozzles.\u201d<\/p>\n

Since Russia\u2019s full-scale invasion of Ukraine created an energy crisis, China has hugely ramped up its renewables, deploying 88GW worth of solar in 2022, 217GW in 2023 and 277GW in 2024. Combined with its deployment of wind power, it has built the equivalent of the entire capacity of the US grid in renewables alone in that period. Observers view China as seeking to at once dominate future industries while cutting itself free of vulnerable foreign energy supplies.<\/p>\n

Related Article\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Last week the Chinese military published five key lessons of the assault of Iran, the fifth of which was that the \u201cultimate reliance\u201d was \u201cself-reliance\u201d.<\/p>\n

Hochschild, who was appointed by California\u2019s Democratic governor Gavin Newsom, said his message to Australian policymakers would be that the green transition served as an engine of both economic and energy security.<\/p>\n

The conference will feature the launch of a program based on a Californian initiative to direct seed funding for three Australian start-ups to each receive $A50,000 to test their clean energy technologies at Australian tertiary, government and private research institutions at no cost to them, no requirement to find matched private investment, and no IP claims.<\/p>\n

Bowen said that Australia\u2019s deployment of renewables had absorbed some of the shock of international energy price volatility.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is energy that isn\u2019t priced by global fossil fuel markets \u2013 and that helps better protect Australians from exactly this kind of shock.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur focus has been on building Australia\u2019s energy resilience and security. We\u2019ve massively ramped up renewable energy \u2013 solar, wind and batteries, taking advantage of our abundant and cheap natural resources.\u201d<\/p>\n

On Sunday this masthead reported that funding for the transition would be curbed in the May budget, despite warnings the nation may not meet its target to reach 82 per cent green energy by 2030.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe law that Governor Newsom signed requires us to reach 90 per cent clean energy by 2035 and 100 per cent by 2045. We are absolutely on a path to do just that,\u201d Hochschild said. \u201cLast year 96 per cent of new additions to the US electric grid were clean energy, and 96 per cent of retirements were fossil fuel-based.\u201d<\/p>\n

Get to the heart of what\u2019s happening with climate change and the environment. Sign up for our fortnightly Environment newsletter.<\/a><\/p>\n

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\"NickNick O’Malley<\/a> is National Environment and Climate Editor for The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age. He is also a senior writer and a former US correspondent.Connect via email<\/a>.From our partners<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Save You have reached your maximum number of saved items. Remove items from your saved list to add…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":527815,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[64,63,75,128],"class_list":["post-527814","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-environment","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-environment","tag-science"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/527814","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=527814"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/527814\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/527815"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=527814"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=527814"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=527814"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}