Is Donald 'drill, baby, drill' Trump helping the world transition away from oil?

While running for the U.S. presidency in 2024, Donald Trump promised to do almost anything to benefit the oil industry. His slogan: "Drill, baby, drill."

But his bold actions since retaking office have in many ways had the opposite effect. While oil companies rake in windfall revenues, Trump's punitive tariffs on China and the price shocks from the war he started with Iran in February have driven many countries to consider the upsides of renewable energy.

"This is Economics 101. If you increase the price of a good and make it riskier, then you will drive people to search for alternatives," said Kingsmill Bond, director of global energy think-tank Ember. "That's exactly what's been happening."

One of the most obvious examples is electric vehicles. A report released last month by the International Energy Agency (IEA) found the global EV market rebounded in the second quarter of this year, even as overall car sales declined.

Statistics collected by Ember show that EV exports from China, the world's biggest EV producer, between March-May 2025 and March-May 2026 spiked — up 117 per cent in Brazil, 127 per cent in South Korea, 175 per cent in Australia and 220 per cent in Italy.

Countries are also adapting their energy grids to the new reality. Earlier this year, the U.K.'s largest energy supplier reported a 50 per cent increase in solar panel sales, year over year, while rising energy costs in Asia have boosted rooftop solar. Even as Canada looks to expand investment in pipelines, the government has announced a nuclear strategy aimed at doubling the electrical grid's capacity by 2050. 

"EVs and batteries and solar panels are flying out the door, because people want an alternative," Bond said. 

Countries seeking energy security

As Bond points out, the broader energy transition has been underway for a while. In its review of 2025, for example, Ember noted that renewables produced more than one-third of global electricity generation, "overtaking coal power for the first time in 100 years."

But the Iran war gave people the world over new incentive to consider clean energy.

Iran's response to the U.S.-Israeli attacks that began in February was to block the transit of one-fifth of the world's oil through the Strait of Hormuz. As the price of oil rose to nearly $120 US a barrel, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen called it "the second fossil fuel crisis in just a few years," after Russia's invasion of Ukraine in 2022.

"There is one thing that all these events are making clear," she said. "We are paying a very high price for our overdependency on fossil fuels."

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Saudi Arabia shuts key oil pipeline after drone attack launched from inside Iraq

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This seems to be a lesson many countries have learned — particularly in Asia.

For example, Thailand has turned to solar in lieu of rising natural gas prices. Soon after the Iran war began, the Philippines declared an energy emergency and its government signed executive orders to speed up grid connections and a number of projects aimed at creating 1.4 gigawatts of renewable energy (roughly enough to power one million homes).

From an environmental perspective, the responses to the Iran war's energy shocks haven't all been positive; coal usage is projected to hit a record high this year, according to the IEA. Some countries that relied on natural gas have had to switch to coal as the main alternative for powering their electrical grids, due to the shipping constraints on liquid natural gas (LNG) through the Strait of Hormuz. 

But in some cases, reactively reverting to cheaper and dirtier coal is happening in tandem with a proactive clean transition. Both Pakistan and the Philippines have increased their use of coal to offset some of the dependence on gas, but Pakistan's solar transition has been in the works for several years, with solar's slice of the electricity mix nearly tripling between 2023 and 2025, according to Ember.

Even as most of its LNG supply comes from Qatar, Pakistan's Power Minister Awais ‌Leghari was quick to point out how the country's uptake in renewables would cushion it from the disruptions in the Middle East, telling Reuters, "Pakistan is not expected to invest in any source of power that could put it at risk in terms of energy security."

Erica Downs, a senior research scholar at the Center on Global Energy Policy at Columbia University in New York, said electrification inevitably enhances energy security. 

"What country doesn't want to be increasingly self-sufficient in energy production and supply?"

Montreal-based Northern Light Capital Partners led a study that showed that by March 30, a month after the start of the Iran war, more than 150 countries had announced they were investing in clean energy for energy security reasons.

"The U.S. administration's tariffs injected erratic volatility into clean energy supply chains," Joanna Klimczak, founder and CEO of Northern Light Capital Partners, told CBC News. "The war in Iran, meanwhile, has been a definitive accelerant for clean energy investment globally."

'A marathon, not a sprint'

The story of the renewable energy transition can't be told without highlighting China's role. It has been producing solar panels, wind turbines and electric vehicles at a dizzying pace. 

Early in his second term, Trump slapped massive tariffs on a variety of Chinese products, including solar panels. One result is that a lot of them were redirected to Africa, where they are helping countries such as Rwanda, Senegal, Ivory Coast and even oil-rich Nigeria end their reliance on fossil fuels like diesel.

"The cost of equipment went down when the trade war started. The Chinese were desperate to offload," Fawen Nyakudya, managing director of Zimbabwe-based PFN Solar Systems, told German media outlet DW.

Klimczak says that as a result of decades of investment in clean tech manufacturing, China has been able to accommodate global demand for renewable energy at a decisive moment.

Downs points out that unlike during the oil shocks in 1973 (due to the OPEC embargo), 1979 (the Iranian revolution) and 1990 (the first Iraq war), "there are technologies that exist today that give people alternatives to fossil fuels that they wouldn't have had in decades past."

They're not only available but, in most cases, are cheaper to deploy than traditional fossil fuels.

According to the International Renewable Energy Agency, since 2010, the installed costs of solar have declined by 87 per cent, onshore wind by 55 per cent and battery storage has fallen by 93 per cent.

Downs says it's "still a little early to tell" if Trump's trade and military exploits have had a lasting impact on the global energy transition. One key question is whether the price of oil went high enough "to force a more permanent shift to clean tech."

On Monday, the price of a barrel of Brent crude hit $109 US — the highest since May. But oil has yet to reach the lofty levels some analysts predicted earlier in the year.

"Oil didn't hit $200 [a barrel] — didn't hit $150," Downs said. "I've heard some people question, is it actually not a good thing, in the long term, that prices did not reach those sky-high levels?" 

The energy transition is inevitable, Bond says, and moments like this accelerate the pace.

"This is a marathon, not a sprint. There is an ongoing shift from fossil fuels to alternatives that's been going on for a long time," he said. "And every time there's a shock like this, it just encourages people [to change] a little bit faster."