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The War in Iran Exemplifies the National Security Rationale for Renewables
Among its many implications, the US-Israeli war against Iran exposes energy risks for countries reliant on fossil fuel imports from the Middle East, underscoring the energy security benefits of clean energy. The widening conflict, including the blockage of the oil and gas chokepoint at the Strait of Hormuz, is potentially the most disruptive conflict to the energy market since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022. With oil and gas prices spiking and no clear end to the conflict, market analysts predict potential long-term disruptions to the energy supply chain, which would add further uncertainty to an already unstable geopolitical situation. Countries that react to this moment by seeking to stockpile or shift suppliers of oil and LNG simply exchange short-term energy security for long-term vulnerability, prolonging their exposure to geopolitical shocks and failing to meet their increasing energy demands.
Countries in East Asia, such as South Korea, Japan, and China, are especially reliant on oil and LNG from the Middle East, the loss of which will have significant impacts on their economies. In contrast, the falling prices, improved resilience, and strategic autonomy offered by renewable sources make them a secure option for countries looking to minimize their exposure to risk.
For more, the Center for Climate and Security has hosted “Renewable Energy is National Security” communities of practice across East and Southeast Asia, and you can read outputs from these convenings below:
- Protecting Korea’s National Security with Renewable Energy
- The interrelation of climate change and national security, The Korea Times
- The National Security Rationale for Japan’s Transition to Renewable Energy
- Protecting Japan’s National Security with Renewable Energy
- Indonesia’s Climate Security and Renewable Energy Nexus: A Landscape Assessment
Preparing for Disaster: Climate-Related Provisions in the FY26 NDAA
By John Conger
On December 19, President Trump signed the FY2026 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), which was passed with bipartisan support by Congress.
While the tone of both the Pentagon and Congress has shifted in recent years, and explicit discussion of climate change as a national security issue has been deprioritized, the operational impacts of climate-driven hazards are clearly reflected in this year’s legislation. Where past NDAAs emphasized long-term resilience, Arctic strategy, or climate risk assessments, the FY26 NDAA focuses more narrowly and pragmatically on preparing the force for wildfires and natural disasters that are already affecting military operations, installations, and personnel.
This shift mirrors operational reality. US forces—particularly the National Guard—are increasingly deployed domestically in response to extreme weather events. The Center for Climate and Security tracks these trends through its Military Responses to Climate Hazards (MiRCH) Tracker, which documents the growing tempo and scope of military disaster response missions.
Exploring the Collision of Extreme Weather, Information Manipulation, and Security Threats in Florida
By Tom Ellison, Erin Sikorsky, and Noah Fritzhand
Information manipulation is increasingly recognized as a contributor to climate risks. 2025 saw landmark academic assessments on the topic, as well as the first action on climate information integrity at a UN climate summit. Meanwhile, bad actors take advantage of opportunities to propagandize, sow confusion, and undermine trust as the impacts of climate change intensify and the stakes of policy action grow. These mutually reinforcing challenges jeopardize security and democracy, especially amid volatile geopolitics, rapid change in the technology and media landscape, and US federal reversals on climate policy and information integrity.
This raises questions for a range of US actors amid intensifying extreme weather. How can state and local officials build resilience and respond to emergencies when facing an unsupportive federal government and global, minimally regulated information threats? What are the implications for US military disaster relief and readiness when information manipulation threatens political cohesion and civilian communities? How can journalism or tech policy serve climate security by mitigating mis/disinformation? And how can academia, civil society, and community groups better collaborate to exchange information and expertise?
The Center for Climate and Security (CCS) recently completed a foresight exercise in Florida to explore these questions. Co-hosted by the University of Miami’s Climate Resilience Institute, the event brought together a diverse mix of expertise, including local resilience and emergency management, national security and foreign policy, communications and information integrity, social and natural sciences, and local climate education and activism. Participants heard from senior homeland security and defense speakers, then engaged in a facilitated scenario exercise exploring a plausible extreme weather, information, and national security crisis in Florida. The discussion highlighted several key themes.
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CCS Recommendations Shape Initial Steps on Climate Security in the UK Home Office, Amid Political Barriers
By Tom Ellison
Last year, the Center for Climate and Security (CCS) conducted a research and education project aimed at exploring the implications of climate change for the UK Home Office and making recommendations to better address them. CCS’s final report, A Climate Security Plan for the Home Office, is now being publicly shared here (publication of this report does not necessarily imply Home Office endorsement of particular content or policy recommendations). Drawing on research, in-person interviews in the United Kingdom, and virtual roundtables on key issues, the report outlines the direct and indirect climate-related risks affecting the Home Office’s responsibilities for issues like emergency services, homeland security, immigration, public safety, gender-based violence, and organized crime and fraud. The report highlights the following risks:
- “#1: Harm to UK Citizens’ Health and Safety: Heat, wildfires, flooding, and disease spread pose increasing risks to UK citizens and to the Home Office’s ability to sustain key services for the public.
- #2: Strain on Services, Infrastructure, and Supply Chains: Climate change poses direct risks to the UK’s power, water, and food sectors and is likely to increasingly strain interconnected global supply chains.
- #3: Polarization, Domestic Extremism, and Gender–Based Violence: Climate hazards and heated policy debates give bad actors openings to spread misinformation, polarize society, and target women and girls.
- #4: Inability to Accommodate Increased Climate-Driven Migration: Climate change is increasingly driving and shaping migration and displacement. Migrants are at risk of criminal exploitation, political weaponization, and xenophobic extremism, which can contribute to political instability. Inflexible migration systems and the lack of overseas investments in climate adaptation and resilience amplify the risk.
- #5: Evolving Organized Crime and Fraud: Climate change is likely to make populations more vulnerable to scams and trafficking and shift illicit drug cultivation and markets, while some climate policies will increase fraud risks in underregulated climate finance flows and carbon markets and introduce novel customs and tariffs to enforce.
- #6: New Foreign Insecurity and Threats: Climate change will likely contribute to overseas instability, conflict, or geopolitical tensions in ways that can create new threats to the UK or reverberate throughout UK society.”
The report offered a series of recommendations for the UK Home Office to address climate risks “comprehensively, proactively, and humanely.” Recommendations were wide-ranging, including leading an internal climate resilience process, enhancing climate data and foresight capabilities, strengthening collaboration with peer ministries and civil society, and bolstering emergency services and legal migration avenues.
CCS also ran a climate security education series for Home Office civil servants. Participants working on migration, wildfire response, gender-based violence, and homeland security engaged in a tailored curriculum of readings, outside speakers, and seminar discussions on climate risks and policy solutions. The program culminated in a daylong foresight exercise in London, where participants noted that the program “changed my whole mindset” and provided “a place to start.”
Drawing on CCS recommendations, the Home Office has since taken new steps to understand and address climate risks to its responsibilities. For the first time, the latest yearly Home Office report to Parliament added climate security to its official risk register. It acknowledged that “climate change represents a serious threat to Home Office operations and policy interests.” The report notes CCS input drove new plans to appoint climate security champions across Home Office policy areas, improve data and evidence, and build internal climate literacy, saying:
The recommendations from [CCS’s] work formed further initiatives. In particular, we conducted more detailed analysis to improve our understanding of climate change risks, including under different scenarios, and we have started the process of embedding these risks in our departmental risk processes to improve climate security action. In 2024, the Home Office commissioned Climate Change Risk Assessments for its own property assets, identifying the key risks to its estate and operations.
At the same time, these are nascent steps in the scheme of UK and global climate risks. According to the UK Met Office’s State of the Climate report, extreme heat and flooding are becoming the norm, with three of the five warmest years on record coming since 2020. Work by CCS and others notes that the scale of climate threats to UK populations, energy, food, and economic security dwarfs policy action to address them, and the Home Office itself reports it lacks a “clear understanding of the nature, scale and proximity of climate security risks.” Moreover, much more work remains to align broader UK policy and resource prioritization with some of CCS’s recommendations, which face political headwinds. For example, since 2023, the Home Office has touted plans to cut both irregular and legal migration and strengthen border security, amid anti-immigration criticism from rightwing politicians, and the United Kingdom is cutting its overseas aid budget by 40%. September’s far-right “Unite the Kingdom” rally drew more than 100,000 anti-immigrant protesters, which resulted in dozens of arrests and injuries to police, and was featured in Russian official media as “a harbinger of a Western European cataclysm.”
The CCS report noted that as climate change drives and reshapes migration, “the risk is not migration or migrants, which are not security problems” but rather extremism, humanitarian suffering, and geopolitical meddling stemming from a “failure to adapt to and accommodate such migration,” with solutions lying in legal migration options and investments in sending and receiving communities.