Hormuz: High AC Costs as UK Heat Wave kills Thousands
Juan Cole 07/13/2026
Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – What does the Middle East have to do with the brutal British heat wave that has left thousands dead over the past two months? Everything. The Hormuz Crisis has heated back up again, with multiple US strikes on southwestern Iranian ports and Iranian attacks on US military installations such as the HQ of the Fifth Fleet in Manama, Bahrain and on the Gulf Arab states more generally. Several Qatari civilians, including a child, were injured by Iranian drone strikes on Sunday.
The US attacks resumed in part because the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps on Friday targeted a Qatari Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) tanker. Other such LNG tankers have approached the Strait of Hormuz and then turned back last week. The IRGC is behaving this way because they believe their leverage over the Strait is the main achievement of the 39-Day War and is a guarantee against the Israelis and the US turning Iran into Gaza, with periodic attacks until the country is reduced to rubble. Tehran would rather suffer some US strikes now in order to stand its ground than to yield its new advantage in the Gulf only to be subject to further wars after the US midterms.
It is becoming apparent to energy companies that this crisis is likely to be prolonged, and that fossil gas prices will remain elevated the rest of the year. In the UK, they are 50% above the pre-war average. Even if a country does not import much gas from Qatar, it suffers from increased prices because of reduced supply and global market competition.
Anniek Bao at CNBC reports that the Italian subsidiary of France’s EDF has announced that Qatar is extending the Force Majeur it issued last March into the fall, and is withholding another 4 cargoes from the Italian market. Force Majeur means that it is unable to meet its contractual obligations because of wars or natural calamities. Not only is passage through the Strait of Hormuz chancy for a gas tanker, given that drones are flying around, but Iranian missiles destroyed 17% of the capacity of the Ras Laffan liquefied natural gas facility in Qatar, reducing its production for years to come.
About 8% of the UK’s LNG comes from Qatar, and shortages are hitting there, too.
Clark Savage at Energy News Beat reports that Britain’s National Energy System Operator (NESO) just issued a warning that there will be a shortfall of electricity this summer of 1.2 gigawatts.
Worse, many countries, including the UK, may not be able to lay aside enough fossil gas to get through the coming winter, especially if the Hormuz crisis persists.
The UK may not have enough air conditioners for the new Global-Heated world we’ve emitted ourselves into by burning coal, gas and petroleum, but what air conditioners — and fans — it has have been working nonstop. In London last Thursday the high hit 95°F (35°C) and even went up to 99.4°F (37.5°C) at the height of the late June heat wave. These numbers may not sound so bad to Americans in some parts of the US, but they are apocalyptic for London. Back in 1983 when my wife and I came to London for the month of May while I did research in the the British National Archives, we routinely had to turn on the heat because we were so cold. That was maybe a fluke, but still, people in London are not used to Dallas, Texas-style high temperatures in the spring and summer.
Researchers have come to the conclusion that the May-June heat waves killed 2,700 people, and that climate change made the situation so much worse that 40% of those deaths can be attributed to it. Climate change killed over a thousand Britons by baking them to death.
How many of them died because they could not afford to run an air conditioner or even a fan because of high electricity costs provoked by the Iran War?
Savage says that renewables account for between 45% and 55% of of British electricity generation. Nuclear accounts for 8% to 12%. Britain imports 10% to 20% of its electricity from Europe. The remaining shortfall is made up with fossil gas, which makes of 25% to 40% of electricity generation depending on what is happening with the other fuel sources. The UK phased out coal in 2024.
The UK still uses gas peaker plants to cover the shortfall of electricity in the evening from 6-9 when solar panel output falls but people are getting home from work and using more electricity (and these days are turning on the fan or turning up the AC).
Note to London: they don’t have to do that. California has been successfully replacing gas peaker plants with megabatteries. It has been reducing its gas use by large percentages every year in recent years.
The UK now has 7.6 gigawatts of battery storage, which is more than it has of nuclear-generated electricity. But that is a tiny amount of battery power for such a big country. California has 17 gigawatts of installed battery capacity.
Worse, the government sets electricity prices according to the price of fossil gas. That means that even if a consumer is getting electricity from inexpensive wind and solar, they are having to pay fossil gas prices for it. Why? That makes no sense, and likely hurts the advance of renewables.
Photo by Hugo Sousa on Unsplash
The private energy utility Octopus Energy, which favors wind and solar, points to the breakdown of the US-Iran Memorandum of Understanding and the rush of Asian countries to replenish their fossil gas stocks in preparation for the winter as reasons for the continued high gas prices.
It also complains that the UK government hasn’t invested in the grid sufficiently. Sometimes it cannot move electricity generate by wind turbines to where it is needed and has to pay the wind farms to go offline and depend on gas instead. High density transmission lines are key to a successful transition to renewables. Governments have money, they can make this investment if they want to.
In answer to the question of how this gets better, CEO Greg Jackson replies that more wind, solar and batteries solve the problem.
How refreshing to hear an energy utilities CEO tell people the truth.
He might have added how crazy it is for people to burn fossil gas to make electricity for ACs to cool down in a heat wave caused by burning fossil fuels, ensuring more heat waves. There is one way off this treadmill.