Lower your highway speed by ten kilometres an hour. Work from home three extra days a week. Replace your gas cooker with an electric one. These are not lifestyle suggestions from a wellness influencer — they are official policy recommendations from the International Energy Agency, the Paris-based body whose usual audience is energy ministers and oil traders, not people deciding whether to take the bus.

The IEA’s new report, “Sheltering from Oil Shocks,” published on Friday, marks the moment the energy crisis stopped being a story about barrel prices and started being a story about your morning routine.

Ten Steps to 2.7 Million Barrels

The 10-point plan is aimed squarely at demand. With Brent crude flirting with $120 a barrel — up from roughly $70 before the United States and Israel launched strikes against Iran on February 28 — and the Strait of Hormuz effectively closed, the IEA calculates that roughly 8 million barrels per day have vanished from global supply. A record release of 400 million barrels from emergency stockpiles has not been enough to close the gap.

So the agency is asking the world’s consumers to pitch in. If governments adopt all ten measures, the IEA estimates oil demand could fall by 2.7 million barrels per day within four months. The maths, measure by measure, is surprisingly granular. Lowering speed limits by 10 km/h could cut an individual driver’s fuel consumption by 5 to 10 percent, and national car oil use by 1 to 6 percent. Expanding remote work by three additional days per week could reduce commuting oil use by 2 to 6 percent per country, with individual drivers saving as much as 20 percent. Carpooling and eco-driving together could shave another 5 to 8 percent off car fuel demand.

Then there is aviation. The IEA reckons 40 percent of business flights could be eliminated “in the short term, while maintaining productivity” — a line that will land differently depending on whether you are a frequent flyer or a Zoom evangelist. If widely adopted, that cut could reduce global jet fuel demand by 7 to 15 percent.

The gas cooker recommendation targets the 2.3 billion people in Asia who rely on liquefied petroleum gas for cooking. The IEA wants LPG redirected away from transport — where bi-fuel vehicles burn it — and preserved for kitchens, while encouraging a longer-term shift to electric cooking.

“The World Cannot Simply Produce Its Way Out”

IEA Executive Director Fatih Birol framed the crisis in historic terms: “In the absence of a swift resolution, the impacts on energy markets and economies are set to become more and more severe.” The agency has described the Strait of Hormuz closure as the largest supply disruption in the history of the global oil market — a designation that covers every war, embargo, and revolution since the agency was founded in 1974.

The subtext of the report is blunt. The IEA is telling governments that supply-side fixes — strategic reserves, emergency production increases, diplomatic arm-twisting — are not going to be sufficient. “The world cannot simply produce its way out of an oil shock,” the report states. “It must adapt to lower consumption.”

Several countries are already acting. The Philippines and Pakistan have moved government employees to four-day work weeks. Sri Lanka has closed public offices on Wednesdays. Thailand, Vietnam, and Lao PDR are actively promoting remote work.

The Corporate Corollary

If the IEA’s plan is the household version of the crisis, airlines are living the corporate one. United Airlines CEO Scott Kirby told employees this week that the carrier is “preparing for oil to hit $175 per barrel” and does not expect prices to fall below $100 until the end of 2027. United is cutting roughly 5 percent of its planned capacity for the year — cancelling red-eye flights, trimming Tuesday, Wednesday, and Saturday services, pulling back at Chicago O’Hare, and keeping Tel Aviv and Dubai routes suspended.

The financial arithmetic is stark. At sustained elevated prices, United’s annual fuel bill would rise by approximately $11 billion — more than double the profit from what Kirby called the airline’s “best year ever.” Fares have already jumped 15 to 20 percent in the past week. United is not alone; the industry is facing its worst fuel shock since the pandemic grounded fleets in 2020.

There is something clarifying about the contrast. The IEA is asking you to drive 10 km/h slower. United Airlines is scenario-planning for $175 oil. The modesty of the ask and the enormity of the disruption sit side by side in the same news cycle, which is roughly how a crisis moves from trading floors to living rooms — not with a single dramatic event, but with an international agency politely suggesting you reconsider your commute because two countries are at war.

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