A newly published report found that nations relying on imported energy have been building out clean power capacity at a pace roughly three times that of fuel-exporting counterparts. Findings from the tenth edition of DNV's Energy Transition Outlook point to supply disruptions through the Strait of Hormuz as a factor pushing governments toward lowering their reliance on oil and gas brought in from abroad.
Producers outside the Middle East have been lifting extraction volumes to compensate for interrupted supply chains, while the pace of their own shift away from carbon-based energy sources continues to trail that recorded in other parts of the world. Over the five-year window examined, regions that import energy saw their non-fossil share of the primary mix climb by 2.2 percentage points, a rate roughly three times the 0.7-point gain recorded among exporting regions.
According to the report, net-energy-importing blocs — China, India, and Europe combined — have moved away from fossil fuels at a pace more than three times that recorded across the Middle East, North America, and Russia. DNV's Energy Systems chief executive Ditlev Engel noted that concerns over supply security are reshaping the trajectory of the energy transition, with those regions most dependent on imported fuels pushing harder on electrification, renewables, and storage to reduce their vulnerability to volatile fossil-fuel markets.
On the supply side, producers and exporters have been channelling additional capital into expanding output in response to the current scarcity. Pressure on the Strait of Hormuz has pushed nations that import energy to look beyond their current suppliers, broadening their sourcing options and trimming their dependence on oil and gas — a shift that compounds the outlook for countries whose economies rest heavily on fossil-fuel exports.
A DNV press release projects the Middle East's share of worldwide oil output at roughly 40% by 2050, down from the 50% share that appeared in the organisation's previous annual outlook. A separate DNV sensitivity test looks at a scenario where hostilities across the Middle East persist through 2030, keeping oil and gas prices at moderately elevated levels throughout that window.
Worldwide appetite for oil and gas would run 4–6% below prevailing levels for as long as the hostilities continue, according to projections tied to that particular forecast. Under DNV's primary forecast, consumption levels are projected to stay roughly 2–5% lower through the remainder of the outlook period — a gap that analysts attribute to lasting behavioural and policy shifts rather than a temporary dip, as households and governments move toward non-fossil energy options. A company spokesperson noted that, notwithstanding a more intricate geopolitical environment, the transition away from conventional energy sources is already under way at a considerable scale.
Engel called for heavier investment and quicker uptake in the sector, a position that aligns with broader thinking around energy supply as foundational infrastructure — one that many argue deserves a more prominent place on policy agendas.
A divergence documented in the findings shows that technologies already operating at market scale are pulling further ahead of newer alternatives that depend on policy backing now under growing strain. Price reductions across solar, onshore wind, and battery storage are pushing those technologies into wider use, whereas costlier alternatives at earlier stages of development are finding it harder to gain traction.
Renewable electricity sources — solar photovoltaic arrays and onshore wind farms in particular — have been taking on a steadily larger share of power generation at the expense of fossil fuels, while grid-connected battery storage has expanded roughly fourteenfold across the last five years. Decarbonising the sectors where electrification remains difficult depends on technologies that the report found are receiving insufficient investment attention, with elevated costs and worries over industrial competitiveness steering resources elsewhere.
DNV's extended energy outlook now places projected hydrogen volumes and carbon capture and storage capacity roughly 29% and 15% below the figures that appeared in the previous annual forecast, respectively. Expanded policy backing will be needed to close the price gap and lift deployment rates, even as both technologies are forecast to keep climbing from a relatively modest starting point.
Among energy sources carrying elevated price tags, atomic power stands apart as the one that does not fit the broader pattern. According to DNV's projections, nuclear energy's portion of worldwide electricity output is set to hold steady even as demand grows through expanding electrification. Nuclear capacity is forecast to expand by roughly 30% across the next ten years and by around 170% by 2060, even as high costs and supply-chain vulnerabilities remain concerns.
Sverre Alvik, who leads Energy Transition Research at DNV, noted that solar, wind, and battery storage are positioning electricity as the dominant force in the energy transition, with the rate of electrification over the coming two decades projected to run at more than double the pace recorded over the previous two. Nations that rely on energy imports may be driving the transition away from fossil fuels, yet countries whose economies depend on exporting those same fuels have also moved toward electrification, pointing to reported gains in operational efficiency and reduced running costs as part of the rationale.
