Earlier this month, a delegation of senior U.S. officials made an unexpected visit to South America to meet with Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro.
The visit caused a flurry of speculation. Will the United States consider easing oil sanctions on Venezuela to replace Russian crude? Such a move could have huge ramifications for Venezuela’s oil exports but involves navigating a complicated relationship with the Maduro regime.
For a look into how this could work, host Bill Loveless spoke with Dr. Luisa Palacios, a Senior Research Scholar at the Center on Global Energy Policy and former Chairwoman of Citgo Petroleum Corporation.
Luisa was on the show a few months ago for a conversation about the energy transition in Latin America. She returns to discuss a paper she recently co-authored: “Venezuela Oil Sanctions: Not An Easy Fix.”
Together, they discuss the potential ripple effects of easing sanctions on Venezuela as oil prices spike around the globe.
Heavy Russian airstrikes continue in Ukraine with no end in sight.
As the conflict escalates, rising oil prices are causing alarm about the future of global energy markets. So far, sanctions issued by the European Union have spared Russia’s energy exports, but some European Commission officials have started to call for an oil embargo.
To make sense of the recent oil price volatility, host Jason Bordoff called on energy expert Ed Morse. Morse has been focused on energy policy and commodities since the 1970s and is currently the managing director and global head of commodity research at Citigroup.
He was a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and served as the deputy assistant secretary of state for energy policy in both the Carter and Reagan administrations.
Together, they discuss what Russia’s invasion of Ukraine means moving forward for global oil supplies and prices at the pump.
An increased demand for energy following COVID-19 lockdowns created a severe energy supply crunch in Europe this winter. And now, decisions from corporate executives and government leaders to reduce or outright ban the purchase of Russian oil has forced energy prices even higher. For a look at how energy markets can be leveraged to end Russia’s war in Ukraine and accelerate the transition to clean energy– all while reducing the risks of nuclear proliferation– host Jason Bordoff spoke with former US Secretary of Energy Ernest Moniz.
A key architect of the Paris Agreement and Iran nuclear deal, Moniz is currently the CEO of the Energy Futures Initiative and the Nuclear Threat Initiative. Before joining the Obama administration as Secretary of Energy, Dr. Moniz served as Under Secretary of Energy and as Associate Director for Science in the Office of Science and Technology Policy at the Department of Energy. Prior to his appointment, Dr. Moniz was a Physics and Engineering Systems Systems Professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he founded the MIT Energy Initiative.
In this conversation, Dr. Moniz sheds light on the energy security threats created by the Russia-Ukraine conflict, where things stand on the Iran deal and the future of energy innovation amid turbulent times for the markets.
For a deeper look at how the Russia-Ukraine conflict is impacting energy markets globally, host Jason Bordoff speaks with two foreign policy experts on energy: Angela Stent and Meghan O’Sullivan.
Stent is senior adviser to the Center for Eurasian, Russian and East European Studies and professor emerita of government and foreign service at Georgetown University. She’s published extensively on Russia-related foreign policy matters including “Putin’s World: Russia Against the West and With the Rest.”
O’Sullivan is the Jeane Kirkpatrick Professor of the Practice of International Affairs and the director of the Geopolitics of Energy Project at Harvard University. She served as a national security advisor to President George W. Bush, and has written various books and articles on international affairs.
Together, they discuss the complex energy security and resource management challenges during this time.
Delegations from Kyiv and Moscow met in Belarus yesterday for the first round of talks which resulted in no resolution. At the same time Russian rockets battered Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second largest city, killing and wounding dozens, and leaving much uncertainty on what’s to come next.
Sanctions have been the primary tool by the West to deter Russian aggression and de-escalate the tenuous situation. In this episode host Jason Bordoff speaks with international sanctions experts Richard Nephew and Eddie Fishman about the global energy implications of these diplomacy challenges.
Nephew recently rejoined the Center On Global Energy Policy as a senior research scholar. He’s the author of “The Art Of Sanctions,” and was most recently the US Deputy Special Envoy for Iran under the Biden administration where he played a key role in negotiations over the Iran nuclear deal.
Fishman is an adjunct professor of international and public affairs at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs. From 2015 to 2017, he worked at the US State Department and advised Secretary of State John Kerry on Europe and Eurasia, leading policy work around economic sanctions.
Their discussion focuses on Russia’s global oil and gas exports, the near and long-term outcomes of economic sanctions on the Russian economy and the prospects for a revived Iran nuclear deal.
Silicon Valley is giving greater attention to potential business opportunities in clean energy and climate. It’s also seeing enormous potential for growth when it comes to battery storage, geothermal, electric vehicles, solar, and more.
But there are still questions about how the private sector can effectively fund these new technologies and ventures.
For a look into how to scale climate solutions with the speed that’s needed, host Jason Bordoff sits down with John Doerr, chairman of the venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins. John is known for his early investments in clean technology and outside of the investment world, he’s a social entrepreneur with a track record for tackling climate.
And now, he has laid out his plan in a new book: “Speed & Scale: An Action Plan For Solving Our Climate Crisis Now.”
In this conversation, John outlines his vision for transitioning the economy to clean energy and reflects on his legacy of green investments.
NATO countries, including the US, are sending military equipment to Ukraine in preparation for the worst. But Germany is holding back. With gas prices at an all-time high, the future of Nord Stream 2 in limbo and the recent shutdown of nuclear plants: Can Europe be self-sufficient without Russian gas?
In this week’s episode, Jason Bordoff is joined by Stephen Lacey, host of The Carbon Copy podcast, to look at how we got here. Turns out a lot of it has to do with the geopolitics of the energy transition.
Together, they break down the tricky dynamics between Russia and the rest of Europe. Countries like Germany have invested vast amounts of money in renewables in the hopes of cutting dependence on imported fossil fuels, but how long will it take to get there?
Check out the Foreign Affairs article on this topic that Jason co-authored with policy expert Meghan O’Sullivan.
In February 2021, Winter Storm Uri pushed the Texas power grid to its limit, leading to widespread blackouts across the state. At its peak, the storm left 4.5 million homes and businesses without power, causing an estimated 250 deaths and $90 billion in damages.
As extreme weather worsens, experts worry that the current regulatory system is not enough to address the vulnerabilities in Texas’s electric system, making future outages more common and destructive.
This February, another devastating winter storm hit Texas. In this week's episode, host Bill Loveless sits down with Michael Webber, an energy resources professor at the University of Texas, Austin and an expert on Texas’ unique grid, to discuss what has (or hasn’t) changed since Winter Storm Uri.
What has Texas taught us about building a reliable grid in the face of extreme weather?
Michael is also the chief technology officer of Energy Impact Partners, a $2 billion cleantech venture fund.
His book, Power Trip: the Story of Energy, was published in 2019 with an award-winning six-part companion series that aired on PBS and other networks.
Elevated ocean temperatures are rising sea levels, inundating coastlines, sinking island nations, bleaching coral, and creating more dangerous hurricanes. But oceans also act as a buffer against global warming.
Climate scientists are increasingly turning their attention to oceans. For a deep dive into the science shaping our understanding of the Earth’s watery depths, host Bill Loveless spoke with Peter de Menocal, president and director of Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts.
Peter is a marine geologist and paleoclimatologist by training, and the founding director of Columbia University’s Center For Climate And Life – a research accelerator that supports and trains the next generation of Earth scientists.
They discussed how oceans are changing, the capacity of oceans to take up carbon and the need for policy-relevant research on the seas. They also talked about what led Peter to a career studying and exploring oceans.
The most abundant element in the universe, hydrogen seems – at least in theory – to be a good source of energy. But because of the high costs and other barriers associated with hydrogen power, the real story is more nuanced.
For a deep dive into how the world can harness the power of hydrogen and what role it will play in the geopolitics of the energy transition, host Bill Loveless spoke with Elizabeth Press.
She’s the Director of Planning and Programme Support at the International Renewable Energy Agency, which just published a new report mapping out the future of hydrogen.
The report, titled “Geopolitics of the Energy Transformation: The Hydrogen Factor,” digs into the evolution of hydrogen markets across the world, especially in developing countries.
Read the full report here.
How can the US and Canada cooperate to meet international and domestic climate targets?
To try and answer that question, host Jason Bordoff spoke with Catherine McKenna – the former Canadian Minister of Infrastructure and Communities and former Canadian Minister of Environment and Climate Change.
McKenna, who recently joined the Center on Global Energy Policy as a Distinguished Visiting Fellow, was a lead negotiator of the Paris Agreement before introducing and successfully defending landmark legislation that established a carbon price across Canada.
In this conversation, the pair discuss Canada’s decarbonization strategy, misogyny in climate politics, building US-Canadian partnerships in tackling climate change, and her hopes for this new, exciting stage in her career.
Accelerating a global clean energy transition has never been more vital to curbing the worst impacts of climate change, but greenhouse gas emissions and the use of hydrocarbons continues to rise.
And even as several global fossil fuel giants announce clean energy initiatives, net zero timelines, and carbon capture projects, they continue to invest in oil and gas.
For a closer look at the role that legacy fossil fuel companies can and should play in the clean energy transition moving forward, Host Jason Bordoff spoke with Laszlo Varro — Vice President of Global Business Environment at Shell.
Before taking this position, he spent a decade at the IEA as Head of Gas, Coal and Electricity Markets and then as the organization’s Chief Economist.
They spoke about his take on the IEA’s outlook on the transition, natural gas as a bridge fuel and how traditional oil companies like Shell are responding to growing consumer demand for a clean transition.
The ongoing pandemic and a rocky White House transition overshadowed many other pressing events in the United States and abroad.
Nevertheless, the threats of a changing planet persisted.
2021 included a dire report from the Intergovernmental Panel On Climate Change, a new round of international climate negotiations and climate-fueled fires, floods and hurricanes.
In this episode, Host Bill Loveless sits down to recap the last year in climate and energy policy news and look ahead to 2022 with two climate reporters: Lisa Friedman and Justin Worland.
Lisa is a Climate Desk Reporter with the New York Times, and Justin is a climate reporter with TIME magazine.
Given their areas of coverage, the conversation focused on the United States.
It seems that the coronavirus pandemic is here to stay as the newly-discovered Omicron variant of the virus spreads throughout the globe.
But climate change continues to be a threat too, as the impacts become more severe and the window for action narrows.
In this episode, Host Bill Loveless speaks with someone who has experience working on biological threats like pandemics as well as climate change.
Alice Hill is the David M. Rubenstein Senior Fellow for energy and the environment at the Council on Foreign Relations. She previously served as Special Assistant to President Barack Obama and Senior Director for Resilience Policy on the National Security Council.
The pair discussed her newest book “The Fight For Climate After COVID-19,” a treasure trove of insights on how we can use what we’ve learned from tackling COVID to build a climate resilient future.
Hydropower is one of our oldest sources of renewable energy. In 2018, hydropower made up nearly 60% of Canada’s electricity generation. In provinces like Quebec and Manitoba, hydropower makes up well over 90% of the provincial electricity supply.
One Canadian power company is looking to expand and provide hydroelectricity to its neighbors down south.
In this episode, host Bill Loveless sits down with Sophie Brochu, the President and CEO of Hydro-Québec, a Canadian state-owned utility and the fourth-largest producer of hydropower in the world.
Brochu is currently leading new efforts to expand Hydro-Québec’s reach and bring low-carbon electricity to the United States through new transmission lines in the Northeast.
But, the company is facing pushback from local groups on how and where these new transmission lines should be built.
Bill spoke with Sophie about those criticisms, the future of fossil fuel companies, and her vision for distributing and generating clean electricity throughout North America.
It’s been a month since world climate leaders convened in Glasgow, Scotland for international climate talks.
The conference brought meaningful advances to halt deforestation, curb methane emissions, and deploy clean energy. It also kept the goal of limiting global temperature rise to 1.5 C alive.
But closing the gap between ambition and reality will require herculean efforts from all countries, particularly western nations which are responsible for a majority of historical CO2 emissions.
To talk through the challenges that lie ahead, Host Jason Bordoff spoke with Laurence Tubiana.
Tubiana is the CEO of the European Climate Foundation. A key architect of the Paris Climate Accords, She has championed international climate diplomacy in her roles as France’s Climate Change Ambassador and as a Special Representative at COP21 in Paris.
In this interview, Tubiana offers an insider’s perspective on the outcomes at Glasgow, and what’s needed from governments and financial institutions over the coming years.
The Covid-19 pandemic continues to shake up the global oil economy as fears surrounding the newly-discovered Omicron variant sparked a drop in prices last week.
This — combined with an ongoing energy crisis and a previous drop in prices during the first wave of the pandemic at the beginning of last year — has prompted a flurry of speculation from oil analysts about where the market is headed next.
For a read on the future of oil markets, Host Jason Bordoff spoke with three experts:
Amrita Sen, a Founding Partner and Chief Oil Analyst at Energy Aspects; Bob McNally, the President of the energy advising firm Rapidan Energy Group; and Arjun Murti, a Senior Advisor at Warburg Pincus, a global private equity firm.
Their roundtable discussion touched on President Biden’s decision to release crude oil from the nation’s Strategic Oil Reserves, the upcoming OPEC+ meeting and what international leaders need to consider as the world transitions away from fossil fuels.
COP26 is behind us, but the work is just getting started.
The world leaders who convened in Glasgow, Scotland, negotiated an agreement with positive, meaningful steps toward global climate action. But many onlookers are calling for more ambitious timelines.
What comes next? For a deep dive into how the conference unfolded and what it means for the future of climate progress, Host Jason Bordoff spoke with economist Nat Keohane.
Dr. Keohane was recently named President of the Center for Climate and Energy Solutions. Before that, Nat was the Senior Vice President for Climate with the Environmental Defense Fund.
The pair spoke about the successes of the conference, including the final details of the so-called “Paris rulebook.” They also discussed the challenges that will carry over to next year’s conference and beyond.
Negotiators in Glasgow, Scotland have finally come to an agreement aimed at ramping up climate action.
At COP26, host Jason Bordoff and his colleagues at Columbia University helped organize a series of events which convened climate leaders from many regions and different parts of society. One of these events was a roundtable discussion with President Obama and youth climate activists.
In this episode, Jason speaks with Eduarda Zoghbi and Christian Vanizette, two passionate young climate leaders who were part of Columbia’s COP26 delegation.
Eduarda is a graduate student in public administration at Columbia’s School of International and Public Affairs. Her area of concentration is energy and the environment. Eduarda is also a member of the Women in Energy Program at the Center on Global Energy Policy and is currently working to expand the program to young female leaders in Brazil.
Christian is the co-founder of Makesense, a french-based organization that is growing a global network of citizens and entrepreneurs committed to solving environmental and social problems. Christian was an Obama foundation scholar at Columbia University from 2019-2020.
They spoke with Jason about the need for urgency in addressing climate change, why intergenerational action of climate change matters and what progress looks like as we work toward global climate targets.
The COP26 UN climate negotiations are well underway in Glasgow, Scotland.
With that in mind, we wanted to rerun an episode we did a few years back with Dr. Katharine Hayhoe about how to understand and listen to each other when it comes to climate change.
Dr. Hayhoe is an expert climate scientist and communicator. She is currently the Chief Scientist for The Nature Conservancy and is also a Distinguished Professor of Political Science and Public Law in the Department of Political Science at Texas Tech University.
Dr. Hayhoe has precious insights into how we effectively shift public opinion on the side of climate science, especially among members of her own evangelical Christian religion.
Over the course of the conversation, she and Host Jason Bordoff discuss how she merges her faith and her scientific work to communicate the urgency of addressing climate change in an ever-polarized political landscape.
The COP26 UN climate conference has kicked off in Glasgow, Scotland amidst a flurry of important moments in climate-related current affairs—an energy crisis threatens global supply chains and the future of a reconciliation package in Congress could determine whether or not the U.S. will meet its climate targets.
Needless to say, it’s a big week for the climate.
Here to break down his vision for how nations can seize the opportunity at hand to make a meaningful impact on climate change, both domestically and on the world stage, is Manish Bapna.
Manish is the new President and CEO of the Natural Resources Defense Council and the NRDC Action Fund. He has a long background trying to solve complex environmental problems at institutions like the World Resources Institute and the World Bank.
In this episode, Host Bill Loveless sits down with Manish to talk about how nations can go beyond pledges and commitments to make progress on decarbonization.
The Pentagon has released its most ambitious blueprint to date for how the Department of Defense—the largest government agency in the United States and the largest employer in the world— intends to prepare for the risks associated with the climate crisis.
The Climate Adaptation Plan, which describes climate change as a “destabilizing force” and a “national security risk,” offers a strategic roadmap for the U.S. military to adapt to the impacts of the climate crisis. These include geopolitical turmoil, threats to U.S. military infrastructure and the increased frequency of natural disasters at home and abroad.
In this episode, Host Bill Loveless speaks to one of the pentagon leaders behind the report— Richard Kidd.
Mr. Kidd is the Deputy Assistant Secretary for Environment & Energy Resilience at the Department of Defense. There, he oversees efforts related to coastal resilience, pollution prevention, and compliance with environmental laws.
They discuss how to balance the energy needs of today with a forward-thinking approach to managing the climate risks that have already and will continue to affect U.S. military operations.
The clean energy transition will involve an unprecedented investment in zero and low-carbon technologies. This shift to a clean energy system will require what are known as critical minerals such as aluminum and copper used in photovoltaic solar panels, and lithium and cobalt used in lithium-ion batteries.
New surges in demand for these critical minerals has challenged the ability of global supply chains to keep pace with this demand. As more and more nations commit to ambitious net-zero targets, demand for these minerals will only go up.
In this episode, Host Bill Loveless interviews Frank Fannon, the Managing Director of Fannon Global Advisors, a firm focused on geopolitics, market transformation, and the global energy transition.
Mr. Fannon was formerly the First Assistant Secretary for Energy Resources in the U.S. State Department, where he advised the Secretary of State on a host of issues related to energy resources and national security.
Bill spoke with Mr. Fannon about the future of the critical minerals supply chain as well as some of the broader geopolitical trends in the clean energy landscape.This episode references a past live episode that Host Jason Bordoff conducted with Ford CEO Jim Farley and Mary Nichols, Distinguished Visiting Fellow at the Center on Global Energy Policy and the former Chair of the California Air Resources Board.
Most of the pressure on oil companies to make more environmentally-conscious investments is targeted at companies like Shell and Exxon. But these companies produce only 15 percent of the world’s oil and gas supply.
The majority of oil production comes from nationally-owned oil companies, and the question of how they will respond to the clean energy transition is especially vital in Latin America where state-owned companies like PDVSA, PetroBras and Pemex dominate the region’s energy sector.
In this episode, Host Jason Bordoff speaks with a leading expert on oil markets and the Environmental Social and Governance (ESG) agenda in Latin America -- Dr. Luisa Palacios. She has special insight into this topic as a former board chair of the oil refiner Citgo, an energy firm owned by the Venezuala-based nationalized oil company, PDVSA.
Dr. Palacios is currently a Senior Research Scholar at CGEP and received a Masters degree at Columbia University. Previously, she was Medley Global Advisor’s Head of Latin America. She also worked at Barclays Capital as a Director in emerging markets research.
Dr. Palacios spoke with Jason about where Venezuela and other Latin American oil majors are headed in a moment of big market shifts. They also took a broader look at the future of oil and ESG practices in the Latin American Region.
The Biden Administration recently released a blueprint for how the U.S. could get nearly half of its electricity from the sun by 2050 called, “The Solar Futures Study.” But reaching that 50% will require an expansive, multi-sector investment of money and resources toward the clean electricity source that meets only about 4% of the nation’s power demand now.
Host Bill Loveless dug into the hows of deploying solar widely and effectively with Mary Powell, the recently-appointed CEO of Sunrun, a leading residential solar company in the U.S.
Mary previously headed up the Vermont-based electric utility, Green Mountain Power.
While there, Mary was known for being a disruptor in the utility space in her embrace of clean energy reforms.
Bill and Mary spoke about the tricky nature of the residential solar market, how solar is figuring into congressional legislation and how electric utilities can work with the clean energy transition instead of fighting it.