How American Sanctions Fuel Terrible Climate Policy Around the World

With the world sailing toward hellish levels of global warming, the fact that a third of it is under some form of sanction from the United States—the world’s largest historical emitter of planet-heating greenhouse gases—should be cause for concern. Sanctions can impose environmental threats in their own right, limiting targeted countries’ ability to respond to climate disasters and invest in low-carbon development. The Post’s investigation notes concern from current and former U.S. officials that the massive uptick in sanctions could undermine possibilities for the kind of global cooperation desperately needed to deal with the climate crisis. Moreover, if sanctions can be seen as an extension of American economic statecraft—alongside tariffs and trade agreements—their increasingly bipartisan popularity may well threaten the climate goals the White House claims that Bidenomics aims to meet.

“Undergoing the green transition requires two things: technology and financing,” says Esfandyar Batmanghelidj, CEO of the Bourse & Bazaar Foundation, an economic think tank. “Broad sanctions regimes, like those in place on Russia and Iran, are expressly designed to reduce access to technology.” These sanctions are meant to reduce government revenues and close off options for foreign investments and loans. “So while the sanctions may not directly target a country’s ability to install solar panels, build wind turbines, or adopt electric vehicles, these critical steps for the green transition become more difficult,” Batmanghelidj told me.

Sanctions accordingly offer major oil-producing states like Russia and Iran, especially, an unintended source of leverage, Batmanghelidj argues. They provide “ways to externalize the costs of sanctions,” he says, meaning that countries that can’t invest in greener development might double down on fossil fuels that help make the planet hotter for everyone. A recent paper in the journal Policy Studies finds that, by 2028, sanctions on Iran are expected to drive up carbon emissions by 12.5 to 30 percent above what they would be otherwise. Researchers attribute that to sanctions’ limits on Iran’s access to technology, services, and expertise; their blockage of international aid; and amplification of the natural resource intensity of Iran’s economy, e.g., the amount of fossil fuels used across economic sectors. “Prior research has typically identified a positive correlation between economic growth and CO2 emissions. In contrast, our findings indicate that during the period of lifted sanctions,” the study’s authors write, “heightened economic growth coincides with a reduction in energy-related CO2 emissions, attributed to improved energy intensity.”