There’s nothing like a war to focus the mind – especially when it’s happening in the Persian Gulf, source of a fifth of the world’s oil. The assault on Iran has put a spotlight on transport fuel security.
Energy minister Chris Bowen suggested Australians should feel reassured with over 30 days supply of petrol and diesel. Liberal MP Andrew Hastie warned of a “huge risk” of supply drying up and called for more “resilient” fuel stocks.
Long ago Australia produced and refined over half the oil needed for its transport system, but now we depend completely on international supply lines, mainly from the Middle East to Asian refineries and from there to our shores. And Asia’s oil market is the one most most exposed to the war.
The US uses very little Middle Eastern oil, but President Trump has made himself a champion of fossil fuels everywhere. Last week he gave the US navy the task of escorting tankers through the Strait of Hormuz. “No matter what, the United States will ensure the FREE FLOW of ENERGY to the WORLD,” he declared.
Trump’s second term has brought a complete reversal of US government policies on private transportation. Federal support for electric vehicles has been abolished and standards for fuel economy have been slashed, while penalties for car-makers who fail to meet them have been eliminated. From late last year, US electric car sales fell sharply.
Visualising a future outside those 20th century energy paradigms is beyond Trump. But after a lifetime of following the US and desperate to mitigate the risk of more oil price shocks, the rest of the world is looking at how future transport energy might be reshaped, going all-out on wind and solar power for electric vehicles.
Globally, electric vehicle sales rose over 30 per cent in 2025, reaching record levels everywhere but the US and surpassing four million EVs for the first time – over a quarter of new car sales (they were under 3 per cent in 2019).
Australia’s longer average driving distances and our fondness for SUVs and trucks have kept petrol or diesel vehicle sales well ahead of EV sales, but that gap is narrowing due to a dramatic fall in EV purchase prices and a parallel rise in availability of ultra-cheap electrical energy from home solar backed up by batteries.
EVs seem a no-brainer for Tasmania. Our travel distances are nowhere near those confronting mainland road users. Our island gets more sunshine for solar electricity than most of Europe. We spend around $1 billion a year on transport energy in the form of petrol or diesel, which ends up in carbon emissions. That price will escalate with continuing Middle East tension.
Yet our EV uptake remains stubbornly low, for reasons that have nothing to do with technology and everything to do with people. Central to this is the available wealth on this island, always in short supply and never more so than now.
Transitioning transport energy from petrol and diesel to electricity at scale is not straightforward. It’s easy to imagine people replacing their petrol- or diesel-driven vehicles with EVs, and service stations gradually converting from refuelling to recharging, but technology is only one part of this transition.
Another part is human psychology. People are drawn to mod-cons, largely imported, just as they like to move around. Fossil fuels continue to drive most of the global economy: travel and trade, industry and commerce, war and peace. Renewable energy may eventually change things, and we must hope that it does, but right now this remains the case everywhere.
But the biggest nut to crack in transitioning out of fossil fuels is an economic one. Moving from an established economic system touching every corner of our lives to a new, radically different one involves many financial cliffs. The chances of things going horribly wrong are massive, as are the implications for social equity.
The transport transition cries out for the kind of oversight that can only be provided by government. Successive Tasmanian leaders have long been warned of this. They have known for decades that transport is the greatest single source of our carbon emissions while also costing us precious financial resources.
They have known at least since the 2015 Paris Agreement that the need to cut emissions is desperate, more so with each passing year, and that increasing climate difficulties will only add to those other transition problems.
Why has this not registered with premier Jeremy Rockliff? Could he have secretly joined the Trump bandwagon in the belief that climate change is all nonsense and that with US navy backing we can stick with fossil fuels? We deserve an explanation.