Fossil Fuels vs. Wind Power

The energy follow-on costs of the Iran war, put into perspective

Note: This article was updated on August 7, 2026.

Due to the Iran war, among other factors, the price of oil has risen sharply. As the price of oil rises, so do the prices of fossil fuels. According to EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen (ORF.at), the additional costs of fuel imports into Europe amount to 27 billion euros, in just the first 60 days of the conflict alone.

Faced with this enormous figure, one question kept nagging at me:
What could you do with this amount of money to make Europe less dependent on fossil energy?

Notes for context:

• The following back-of-the-envelope calculation is not a “business plan,” but a rough estimate — an attempt to get a feel for the astronomical figure of 27 billion euros.
• Wind turbines and power infrastructure aren’t built overnight; they require a long planning and lead-up phase.
• This estimate doesn’t account for investments in grid expansion or energy storage, which are necessary to scale up decentralized, variable energy production (e.g., wind or solar power).
• Once the war ends, the price of oil will presumably fall again — and with it, these additional costs.
  Update from 8/7/2026: More than 5 months have now passed since the war began. The price of oil has remained well above its pre-war level the entire time.

Potential for Energy Self-Sufficiency

A quick bit of research into wind power in Austria reveals:

• 1 wind turbine costs roughly 10 million euros over its lifecycle
  (including planning, construction, and operation; sources: IG Windkraft, Lower Austrian Chamber of Agriculture),
• there are currently around 1,400 wind turbines standing in Austria ( Wiener Stadtwerke).

Which leads me to the following back-of-the-envelope calculation:

• 27 billion euros = 27,000 million euros
• 27,000 million ÷ 10 million per turbine
• comes out to 2,700 new wind turbines

With just the additional costs of importing fossil fuels alone, you could build almost twice as many new wind turbines (including planning, maintenance, etc.) as currently stand in Austria. Since these additional costs accrued over 2 months, one could put it pointedly like this:

With the additional costs of fossil fuel imports, Europe could add the wind power capacity of all of Austria every single month.

As mentioned at the outset, this back-of-the-envelope calculation is deliberately rough and simplified.

Still, the calculation illustrates the sheer scale of the costs we’re bearing. The war-driven additional expenditure on fossil imports alone corresponds to investment sums that could power entire regions with renewable energy. And this is despite the fact that Europe’s dependence on fossil energy imports is already very high — independent of the current Iran war.

Update from 8/7/2026:

• The price of oil, including all fluctuations, has remained well above its pre-war level since the Iran war began.
• According to WirtschaftsWoche, the additional costs over the first 100 days of the war amounted to 47 billion euros. That corresponds to a burden that has stayed essentially constant:
  27 billion / 60 days = 0.45 billion/day
  47 billion / 100 days = 0.47 billion/day

Conclusion

One question keeps nagging at me:
Why don’t we think and plan further ahead?
Why aren’t we pursuing a more assertive policy toward an energy-self-sufficient Europe focused on sustainable energy?

Update from 8/7/2026:
The current heat wave in Europe provides yet another powerful argument for moving away from fossil fuels.