Penn Experts on the Climate and Energy Costs of the War in Iran

As oily black rain falls on Iranians and global energy and food supplies are imperiled—while oil and gas companies concurrently rake in increasing profits—it’s clear that a fossil-fuel-based global energy system is as bad for the economy and energy security as it is for people and the planet.

Don’t trivialize human suffering 

To begin, any discussion of the war’s impacts must start with the human costs. Thousands of people have been killed across the Middle East, including at least 2,100 civilians—the vast majority by U.S.-Israeli airstrikes—since the U.S. and Israel’s initial strike on Iran on February 28. In addition to direct violence, strikes have targeted oil facilities, water infrastructure, and industrial sites, which have direct economic and environmental impacts, as well as increasing the long-term humanitarian toll of the war, like toxic exposure, hunger, and dehydration. 

Benjamin L. Schmitt, a senior fellow at the University of Pennsylvania jointly appointed with the Department of Physics and Astronomy and the Kleinman Center for Energy Policy and director of the Perry World House Graduate Program at Penn, warned that this kind of trivialization of human suffering is a recurring pattern: “I think that it often happens that climate activists attempt to use unfortunate framings like—‘the climate upside of the war in (fill in conflict)’—that sort of framing is insensitive at best and offensive at worst given the level of human misery associated with modern warfare.”

Direct climate impact 

All wars have direct climate and environmental impacts, and the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran is no exception. The global carbon budget, which is the total allowable emissions to limit the worst impacts of climate change, is being drained faster by the war than by 84 countries combined. Analysis by the Climate and Community Institute found that the first 14 days of the war released more than 5 million tons of greenhouse gas emissions. Patrick Bigger, who co-authored the analysis, told the Guardian, “every refinery fire and tanker strike is a reminder that fossil‑fuelled geopolitics is incompatible with a livable planet. This war shows, yet again, that the fastest way to supercharge the climate crisis is to let fossil fuel interests dictate foreign policy.”

While the U.S. government has largely dismantled the satellite imagery that once tracked environmental change across the region, social media footage and official statements illustrate an unfolding ecological crisis on land, sea, and in the air across Iran, the Gulf, and Lebanon, according to reporting by Wired Magazine. Toxic smoke, oil spills, increasing emissions, and contaminated land threaten human and environmental systems. After Israeli strikes targeted four fuel depots near Tehran, rain turned black with airborne oil droplets and coated streets, cars, plants, and animals. 

Scott Moore, Practice Professor of Political Science, Managing Director of Global Initiatives, Research, and Strategy at Penn Global, and Senior Advisor to the Water Center, discussed the impacts of targeting water supply infrastructure, namely desalination facilities, in the Gulf region in particular, which “is one of the few parts of the world that really doesn’t have a great solution to long-term water supply pressures.” Moore points out that climate is a “huge reason” for that pressure and that deliberately targeting these civilian systems amounts to a war crime. Other attacks and threats of attack on infrastructure, such as power plants, are also raising concern among legal experts.

Global energy system impacts

The war in Iran is also creating uncertainty in global energy markets, as a quarter of the world’s oil and gas supplies pass through the Strait of Hormuz. International Energy Agency Executive Director Fatih Birol warned that oil prices are “not reflecting the severity of the problem” posed by infrastructure damage and the closure of the Strait of Hormuz. As oil prices “converge” with on-the-ground realities, the global economy will be knocked “further into disarray,” and no country will be immune from its impacts. Countries where consumers cannot afford higher energy prices, and where governments cannot offset the increased costs will face the brunt of the economic pain of the war. 

Schmitt explained that in addition to the impact of energy costs going up around the world, “the lack of the ability to export urea and other sorts of fertilizer feedstocks from the Middle East will have a direct impact in several months’ time on crop yields around the world, which will lead to food insecurity.” 

Countries in the Persian Gulf are the dominant producers of nitrogen fertilizer, which is used in crops that yield roughly half the world’s food supply. Combined with the increasing costs of operating diesel-powered farm equipment and transportation, food prices are set to rise globally.  

As the oil and gas industry profits, clean energy is a path forward

Price volatility in global oil markets is allowing producers to reap greater profits at the expense of consumers. BP’s profits in the first three months of 2026 were more than double the profits from this period last year, driven by surging oil prices since the start of the war. According to analysis by the Guardian, the world’s top 100 oil and gas companies profited more than $30 million every hour in the first month of the war in Iran. If oil remains priced at an average of $100 a barrel through the end of the year, these companies will take in $234 billion. This excess revenue as a consequence of human misery and global destabilization is tantamount to war profiteering—on a colossal scale. 

As renewable energy sources continue to get cheaper, however, and conflicts like the war in Iran push global energy systems to the brink, clean energy increasingly offers a path to energy security. Moore noted that with significantly higher oil and gas prices, the economics of renewables become more attractive: “In most markets, they were already the cheapest sources of new power generation potential,” and that advantage is likely to grow.

As a caveat, Schmitt warned that climate action will lose public support if it’s perceived as a threat to energy security. “Populations will say, ‘I don’t want to take climate action because it makes me more vulnerable and energy security less guaranteed.’ They’ll start to believe that climate action results in energy poverty,” he explained, “and that would be the death knell to the action we need to take on climate.”

Schmitt argued that the response to this crisis has to be built into the energy system itself. “We need to redouble our efforts,” he said, “to create and deploy at scale energy technologies that result in robust and secure energy infrastructure that can be cleaner than that which is integrated into the global oil trade.” 

Crises like the Iran War, he added, “reinforce the need for more distributed energy, renewable energy infrastructure like solar, wind, geothermal, and hydroelectric around the world, because it will reduce the direct impact of energy security contingencies like this in the future.”

The pattern is consistent across every dimension this war has touched. The human toll, climate and environmental damage, and rising energy and food insecurity are not separate problems. They are the inseparable costs of a fossil-fueled global energy system. A distributed, renewable alternative is already within reach, and building it is a matter of deploying the right infrastructure at scale.

Elea Castiglione is a 2026 graduate of the College of Arts & Sciences, where she studied philosophy, politics, & economics with a concentration in public policy and governance, and minors in sustainability and environmental management and fine arts.