Energy Update #3: is the energy crisis really behind us?

Energy Updates by Energia Corrente × eNextGen — the data, trends and news that really matter to understand the world of energy.

In the first issue of this series, dedicated to the 2025 electricity review, we noted how solar was Italy’s fastest-growing technology, even though it had started more slowly than the rest of Europe. Terna’s data for May 2026 confirms that the acceleration is continuing, and it is a good starting point for a question that current geopolitics makes anything but abstract: how much, and how quickly, do renewables and electrification reduce a country’s exposure to oil shocks?

Italian solar keeps running

According to Terna’s May 2026 report on the power system, photovoltaic generation reached 6,014 GWh, up 19.3% compared to the same month in 2025. The increase is largely explained by new capacity coming online and only marginally by weather conditions: a signal that the momentum is structural, not cyclical.

Installation data confirms it: the national photovoltaic fleet reached 46.1 GW of operating capacity, with growth of 2.6 GW. The push comes mainly from the South and the industrial North: the region with the largest increase is Sicily, followed by Lombardy and Emilia-Romagna. In May, solar was the leading contributor among renewables, which together covered 60.8% of national net generation.

Taken on their own, these numbers are simply good news for the Italian power system. They become far more interesting when read alongside what is happening in oil markets.

Why a solar update talks about Hormuz

Only a few days ago the announcement many had been waiting for seemed to have arrived: the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz — through which around 20% of the world’s energy supply transited before the conflict — and an agreement that was supposed to close the most acute phase of the crisis. Markets reacted quickly, with oil prices down around 20% from their 2026 highs, and the reading gained ground that the alarm had been overdone.

Recent days have now definitively disproved that conclusion: the 60-day truce between the United States and Iran has already broken down. The temporary agreement deferred the most sensitive issues to a later negotiating phase, but a final deal was never signed.

It is only the latest in a long series of announcements about the end of the conflict that have collided with the complexity of the current geopolitical reality. A structural issue also remains on the table: if the reopening continues to depend on Iranian consent, Tehran gains permanent leverage, capable of influencing regional balances and international trade dynamics. Iran has already begun collecting service fees on transit, a scenario that the UN maritime agency has described as a dangerous precedent, since no international agreement allows tolls on transit through straits.

The immediate relief, as anticipated in the previous Energy Update, comes not so much from new barrels as from the easing of pressure on strategic reserves, which had been drawn down to an exceptional degree through a coordinated release of around 400 million barrels.

That is precisely the point. The end of hostilities and the end of the crisis are not the same thing, and for energy-intensive companies the vulnerability laid bare by Hormuz does not close with a press release, least of all one that keeps being postponed. The only lever that reduces it structurally is reducing oil in the system: and that is exactly what Terna’s data measures.

Every share of demand — electrical and, above all, mobility-related — that shifts from crude to electricity generated by sources such as solar means less exposure to the most sensitive routes. Ember’s independent analyses document it: as early as 2025, electric vehicles delivered oil savings comparable to Qatar’s annual exports through the Strait of Hormuz.

Asia: stockpiling crude, but electrifying

The most instructive case is the Asian one, and it is not only about China. Beijing has acted as a large stockpiler: in 2025 crude imports hit a record of around 11.6 million barrels per day, with a build-up in strategic reserves that today gives it room to manoeuvre in the face of new tensions.

But China is also, by far, the world’s leading producer of solar panels and electric cars: without that push into electrification, its exposure to the Hormuz shock would be significantly greater today. The same dual movement can be read, on a different scale, across the rest of the region.

The IEA’s new Southeast Asia Energy Outlook 2026 captures a still-marked dependency: the Middle East covers 60% of Southeast Asia’s crude imports. The region, with 9% of the world’s population, will account for almost one fifth of global energy demand growth to 2035, and its fossil-fuel import bill could more than triple by 2035 without structural change.

But the report also records the other half of the story:

• installed renewable capacity, at 120 GW in 2024, is expected to almost triple by 2035;
• electric car sales more than doubled in 2025, at around 500,000 units and almost 20% of the market;
• in the first quarter of 2026 the Philippines became the second destination for Chinese solar exports.

In other words: the region most exposed to Hormuz is also among those building the alternative fastest. The crisis, the IEA writes, is both a stress test and an accelerator.

What to watch now

Structurally, Terna’s data points in an increasingly clear direction: more solar, more electrification, less dependence on the fossil routes most exposed to geopolitical tensions. That is why, alongside the daily monitoring of the crisis — from the consolidation of any agreement to physical flows and the moves of the major stockholders — it is worth also watching the numbers that describe the transformation under way: every GW of renewables installed and every electric vehicle added to the fleet represents one more degree of freedom gained ahead of the next geopolitical flashpoint.

Because, while it is still too early to declare the emergency over, the direction of travel of the energy system now looks fairly clear.

Sources: Terna – Monthly report on the electricity system, May 2026; Ember; International Energy Agency – Southeast Asia Energy Outlook 2026.

Nicolò Golinucci PhD is co-founder and CEO of eNextGen, an official spin-off of Politecnico di Milano that quantifies sustainability and turns it into a competitive advantage for companies.