The Strait of Hormuz and ‘the Spice’
Frankly #61
In this week’s Frankly, I’d like to highlight the importance of the Strait of Hormuz, a global supply chain choke point where nearly half of the world’s oil available for export travels through on a daily basis. In the midst of high-stakes geo-political events where threats (and misery) from warring nations dominate the discourse, we remain (mostly) energy blind to the bottlenecks that lie at the center of these conflicts, which if disrupted could send our liquid-combustible-fuel dependent economies crashing.
How could the threat of expanding regional wars – especially Iran’s potential response in the Strait of Hormuz – impact the world’s reliance on the flow of oil? Who are the people making world-altering decisions – and do they have the best interest of the future in mind? Can a heightened awareness of our global system’s dependency on fragile energy supply chains shift our focus away from escalating risks towards deconfliction and peace?
Last week, I was joined by Luther Krueger to discuss one example of a category of innovation that I’ve taken to calling ‘Goldilocks tech’ – which uses accessible and abundant materials to achieve important tasks for human societies with less or considerably less energy and material throughput. In the western world, most of us are used to indoor, gas or electric stoves, typically powered by fossil fuels, and in a third of the world, people are still using solid fuels – wood, coal, or dung – which come with many health and environmental risks. Solar ovens are an alternative which makes use of passive solar energy at a range of temperatures and can be made from basic or reused materials.
