From the 2026 Hormuz disruption to renewable resilience: energy security and decarbonization governance in import-dependent economies

Import-dependent economies face a systemic governance challenge: a small number of fossil-fuel chokepoints and centralized fossil assets concentrate macroeconomic, health, and water-security risks that conventional energy-security framing systematically underprices. Using the 2026 disruption of the Strait of Hormuz as an illustrative stress test and Israel as a semi-arid, security-sensitive case, this Perspective develops a four-component analytical framework—chokepoint-exposure assessment (distinguishing physical supply, global price, infrastructure-concentration, and cross-sector cascade exposure), quantification of domestic fossil-fuel externalities, mapping of fossil-fuel–water infrastructure couplings, and security-oriented governance instruments—and applies it to governmental, OECD, and epidemiological evidence. The analysis shows that Israel’s fossil-centric paradigm couples exposure to distant chokepoints with the concentration of domestic gas supply in three offshore platforms, a total ambient air-pollution burden of 4,641–6,166 premature deaths annually (over USD 7.2 billion in economic costs), to which fossil-fuel combustion is a major though not exclusive contributor, and a desalination system exposed to low-probability, high-impact maritime oil-spill scenarios. We argue that distributed renewable generation, energy storage, and transport electrification warrant designation and governance as critical national infrastructure, supported by binding climate mitigation legislation, targeted fiscal instruments, and resilience metrics embedded in national security assessments. The framework is operationalized in a reproducible component–indicator–data table, and we conclude by specifying screening criteria under which it may inform decarbonization policy in other small, import-dependent economies.