Karim Elgendy is founder and executive director of the Carboun Institute, an independent climate and energy policy think tank focused on the Middle East and North Africa, and an associate fellow at Chatham House.
When the Strait of Hormuz was effectively closed earlier this year following the US-Israel war on Iran, a familiar argument came back to the fore: war puts energy security first and the energy transition on hold. Governments retreat to what they know best and capital escapes to safety, and plans for renewable energy, green hydrogen and green steel wait for normalcy to return. I think this argument misunderstands the Middle East and North Africa region.
Misunderstanding the region's capacity
It misunderstands what the region's transition is made of. For the Gulf and North Africa, moving beyond hydrocarbons has always been as much about what their industries make and sell as about how their electricity is generated, and on that front the region's advantages are real and go beyond the ones usually cited. Cheap solar power is the obvious one. Less obvious is that the industrial base already exists. The region makes close to half of the world's direct reduced iron, the platform on which lower-carbon steelmaking depends, in gas-based plants that can blend in hydrogen without being rebuilt, and it is already a leading exporter of fertilizer and aluminum.
The region also has the means to act, and reasons to act soon. Sovereign capital is abundant. Decision-making is centralized, so a government that chooses green industrial policy faces little of the political resistance that slows the same choice in Europe or the United States (US). Geography favors it, since the region sits between the European and Asian markets that will buy low-carbon materials. And Europe's Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM), which now prices the embedded carbon of imported goods such as steel, fertilizer, and aluminum, has turned lower-carbon production into a condition of competitiveness.
Altered conditions after the war
The war threatens all of this in multiple ways. The closure of Hormuz and the threat to Bab el-Mandeb show how much of the region's trade moves through chokepoints. Strikes on infrastructure raised the cost of insurance and capital. Foreign investors, whose money many diversification plans quietly counted on, are reassessing regional risk. Governments that had been spending on industrial policy found themselves spending on defence first. Türkiye, which borders Iran and imports most of its energy, felt the price shock immediately.
Even so, the war is unlikely to halt the process. The war changed the conditions of the transition rather than its direction. Economies living off one commodity moving through one strait discovered that resilience is about redundancy, alternative routes, the capacity to make things at home, and institutions able to decide under pressure. Diversification built on sectors as exposed as tourism and real estate looked weak. Diversification built on making things looked more durable in comparison. Investors now ask whether an industrial project has a contracted buyer, secured finance, and a route that survives the next crisis.
Necessity of joint action
The other change is that no country can do this alone, and this is where the next COP, in Antalya, matters. The COP31 presidency has listed green industrialization in the energy sector among its priorities, and Türkiye is well placed to lead on it. It is Europe's largest steel producer, most of its steel is made from scrap in electric furnaces, and it is among the countries most exposed to the EU's carbon border charge.
A Mediterranean COP is also the natural venue for cooperation across the Southern and Eastern shores of the great sea. The TeraMed initiative, launched in 2024 with the aim of catalyzing one terawatt of renewable capacity around the Mediterranean by 2030, is closely aligned with green industrialization goals. We co-chair its work on green industrialization, and the lesson we keep returning to is that cheap power is only an advantage when it goes into something: steel, fertilizer, cement, and a grid that runs around the clock. Antalya could give the green industrialization declaration adopted at COP30 in Belém a Mediterranean track, and push for common standards for green industries such as low-carbon iron and steel, so that a ton of Turkish or Egyptian steel counts the same in Berlin as in Ankara.
There is hope in the midst of this war, but it is conditional. The conflict has settled the question of whether the region should diversify. What it left unresolved is who will govern this diversification and who will benefit from it. A transition financed abroad and built with imported technology would swap one dependence for another. The task now is to move from ambition to implementation, and to do it together.
*Opinions expressed in this article are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Anadolu.
