New Delhi, April 3 -- With the war in Iran now in its second month, India's cooking-gas shortage is turning serious. Policymakers must view this as more than a temporary blip; it is a crisis that may permanently shift how the world's most-populous nation consumes energy.

Electric cooktops are vanishing from shelves: Amazon's local unit reported a 30-fold jump in sales. This marks a pivot for a country where liquefied petroleum gas, or LPG, has 332 million customers. The gas comes home in red-colored cylinders, delivered by a vast distribution network controlled by state-owned refiners.

Assuming 10% of households switch to electric and 70% cook dinner simultaneously, the extra 28-gigawatt demand equals nearly a tenth of the summer peak l...