Afleveringen
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It’s no secret that Republicans and Democrats don’t see eye to eye on climate change.
According to a Pew Research Survey conducted earlier this year, just 12% of Republicans and Republican-leaners think climate change should be a top priority for the president and Congress. Meanwhile, the official 2024 Democratic party platform states there’s “nothing more important than addressing the climate crisis."
Energy and environmental law professor David Spence says today’s news and social media are partly responsible for the divide.
In his new book, “Climate of Contempt: How to Rescue the U.S. Energy Transition from Voter Partisanship,” David argues it’s all but impossible for the government to take significant action to address global warming in a media environment focused on persuading more than educating.
This week host Bill Loveless talks with David about his book and his perspective on the ideological polarization and negative partisanship that’s been building in the U.S. in the past 10-15 years. And how he believes getting us all offline and engaging with each other in person can help push regulatory politics forward.
David is the Rex G. Baker Chair in Natural Resources Law in the School of Law at the University of Texas at Austin. He’s also a professor of business, government, and society in the McCombs School of Business at UT Austin, where he teaches courses in energy and environmental regulation. And he’s co-author of a leading casebook “Energy, Economics, and the Environment.”
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Thanks to the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and the Inflation Reduction Act, the Department of Energy has been flush with cash for the past couple of years. Between the two measures, the DOE now has nearly $100 billion to put toward clean energy and grid development projects around the country through funding and loans.
There’s an expectation that these contributions will drive private investment—and they have been. This July, the DOE reported nearly $50 billion in funding awards already, with more than $60 billion in private investments matching federal dollars.
This week, host Bill Loveless talks with David Crane about where these funds have been going and what effects they’re having on clean energy applications around the country. They also discuss how the DOE is addressing nationwide energy challenges like transmission line permitting, storage, and other hurdles to decarbonization.
David is the under-secretary for infrastructure at the Department of Energy. He previously served as director of DOE’s Office of Clean Energy Demonstrations. He was also CEO of Climate Real Impact Solutions, as well as NRG Energy.
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China’s dominance of global supply chains for many goods, including clean energy technology, is increasing concerns about resilience, security, and geopolitical influence in today’s new era of great power competition. At the same time, efforts to curb China’s dominance are raising concerns about the cost of clean energy at a time when its rapid deployment is needed.
So are we in a new Cold War with China? Should American policymakers try to decouple from China? And how should policymakers address China’s supply chain dominance of the materials needed for the energy transition?
This week, host Jason Bordoff talks with Dmitri Alperovitch about his new book “World on the Brink: How America Can Beat China in the Race for the 21st Century.” They discuss what the strategic challenges from China mean for American policymakers, how the U.S. can diversify critical supply chains away from China, and the security of America’s energy infrastructure.
Dmitri is the co-founder and chairman of Silverado Policy Accelerator. He is a co-founder and former CTO of CrowdStrike. Dmitri previously served as special advisor to the Department of Defense and currently serves on the Department of Homeland Security Advisory Council and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency's Cyber Safety Review Board.
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In 1953, the New York Yankees beat the Brooklyn Dodgers in the World Series, “From Here to Eternity” won the Academy Award for Best Motion Picture. And on May 24 deep in the education section of The New York Times, there was a short piece titled “How Industry May Change Climate.”
In the years after, scientists went from writing about the possible impacts of pollution on climate to warning U.S. presidents. And energy policy expert and scholar Jay Hakes says there’s much more to the story.
From scientists who quietly worked to address growing environmental threats, to lawmakers who deliberated in Congress and the White House over what to do about them, Jay says there’s a history that hasn’t been told. In his new book, Jay looks at these early climate change pioneers and asks about the challenges they faced.
What was it like trying to influence the White House? What solutions did these pioneers offer? And how can their stories further our discourse around climate change today?
This week, host Bill Loveless talks with Jay Hakes about his book “The Presidents and the Planet: Climate Change Science and Politics from Eisenhower to Bush.”
Jay is a scholar and author on U.S. energy policy. From 2000-2013 he served as the director of the Jimmy Carter Presidential Library. He also served in both the Obama and Clinton administrations, including a seven-year stint as director of the U.S. Energy Information Administration.
Jay’s other books include “Energy Crises: Nixon, Ford, Carter, and Hard Choices in the 1970s” and “A Declaration of Energy Policy Independence.”
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With her historic victory in Mexico’s presidential election in June, Claudia Sheinbaum will be the country’s first-ever female leader. And because of her background as a climate scientist who contributed to influential UN climate reports, many hope she will reverse Mexico’s drift away from climate leadership.
But it’s not simple. Sheinbaum is a political protégé of outgoing president Andrés Manuel López Obrador. In his six years as president, López Obrador was a popular leader, but failed to advance climate policy. In fact, Mexico is one of just two countries out of the G20 without a net-zero target for carbon emissions.
Even as López Obrador propped up the oil sector, the primary state-owned petroleum company Pemex is deep in debt and seeing four-decade lows in production. And Mexico’s heavy dependence on the U.S. for natural gas is a growing energy security issue for the country.
Sheinbaum has promised to boost clean energy – how effective will she be? Will she be able to address the country’s growing power demands and energy infrastructure challenges? And will she break from her predecessor’s lagging record on climate change?
This week, host Bill Loveless talks with Carlos Pascual about what a Sheinbaum presidency could mean for Mexico’s addressing the country’s energy issues, and encouraging more investment in clean energy in Mexico.
Carlos is senior vice president for Global Energy and International Affairs at S&P Global Commodity Insights, where he leads all business lines in Latin America. He was previously at IHS Markit, where he concentrated on worldwide energy issues and international affairs.
Carlos served as U.S. ambassador to Mexico from 2009 to 2011 and to Ukraine from 2000 to 2003. From 2011 to 2014 he was a special envoy and coordinator for international affairs at the U.S. Department of State, where he established and directed the agency’s Energy Resources Bureau. He was also a former resident fellow at the Center on Global Energy Policy, Columbia SIPA.
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Global clean energy investment has risen by 40% since 2020, reaching an estimated $1.8 trillion in 2023, according to the International Energy Agency.
The cost of wind, solar, and batteries have fallen rapidly, often competing with fossil fuels, thanks to tech innovations, manufacturing scale, and policy support.
But the world still isn’t on track to reach its emission reduction targets. And now new forms of demand, such as data centers running artificial intelligence, are raising concerns about rising energy use and emissions.
So how do we encourage more innovation in clean energy? How do we mobilize investment to scale-up and commercialize emerging technologies? What is the role of the private sector and what kinds of policies do we need?
This week, host Jason Bordoff talks with Arun Majumdar about some of his views on emerging technologies and energy policy. They also discuss how higher education can adapt to provide the knowledge and skills needed in the clean energy economy.
Arun is the inaugural Dean of the Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability. He also serves as the Jay Precourt Provostial Chair Professor at Stanford University and Senior Fellow and former Director of the Precourt Institute for Energy. Formerly, he served as vice president for energy at Google.
In the Obama administration, Arun served as founding director of the Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy and as the acting under secretary of energy. He also served as a Science Envoy for the U.S. Department of State and currently serves as the chair of the U.S. Secretary of Energy Advisory Board.
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Following decades of economic integration, the cost of clean energy technologies have fallen sharply. But the rising costs of fragmentation, industry-friendly policies, and geopolitical tensions risk slowing the energy transition.
With the recent launch of the Trade and Clean Energy Transition initiative, the Center on Global Energy Policy has prioritized navigating the tensions between climate and trade, and focused on the potential to use trade policy as a tool to accelerate the pace of clean energy deployment.
So how can the rules of trade be better aligned with climate goals and policies? How can the international trading system be modernized to tackle a challenge like climate change? And how can countries reconcile low-cost, clean energy technologies, often made in China, with concerns about economic competitiveness, security, and supply chain resilience?
This week, we return to a conversation from earlier this year between host Jason Bordoff and Dan Esty focused on Dan’s career, his recent work at the World Trade Organization, and the intersection of climate policy and trade policy.
Dan is the Hillhouse Professor at Yale University and director of the Yale Center for Environmental Law and Policy. He has written numerous books on environmental responsibility and economic progress, including Green to Gold and Greening the GATT. Dan also served as commissioner of Connecticut’s Department of Energy and Environmental Protection from 2011 to 2014.
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So far this summer, politics has dominated the news. Which makes sense – it’s a presidential election year after all.
But climate change and its effects haven’t gone anywhere and are getting worse. Just last week, Europe’s climate change service Copernicus announced that Earth hit the hottest temperature ever recorded for two consecutive days.
The same service also said we’ve lived through more than a year now of record-breaking temperatures.
During the June presidential debate, climate change did take center stage – but only for a moment. CNN moderators asked former President Donald Trump what he would do, if re-elected, to slow the climate crisis. His answer deviated quickly to other topics.
For his part, President Joe Biden – who has since announced he’s leaving the race and endorsing Vice President Kamala Harris – played up his landmark Inflation Reduction Act, the largest investment in clean energy and climate action in U.S. history.
But where is the American public in all this?
How worried, frustrated, or hopeful are people feeling about global warming? And how do those sentiments compare to other countries around the world?
This week we return to a conversation from last fall, when host Bill Loveless talked with Anthony Leiserowitz about Yale’s Climate Change in the American Mind surveys, and what they reveal about public opinion around climate change both here in the U.S. and around the world. They also discussed the current discourse in American politics, and how attitudes differ among registered voters.
Anthony is the founder and director of the Yale University Program on Climate Change Communication, and a senior research scientist at the Yale School of the Environment. He has worked with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the National Academy of Sciences, the World Economic Forum, and many other major organizations to understand the psychological, cultural, and political factors that shape climate change beliefs. Anthony also hosts "Climate Connections," a daily 90-second podcast about the climate crisis.
Since Bill’s interview, Anthony’s program at Yale has released its Spring 2024 Climate Change in the American Mind survey results for Beliefs & Attitudes and Politics & Policy.
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Russia’s energy exports, including its significant natural gas capacity, are geopolitical currency for the country. Before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Russia was Europe’s single largest supplier of imported natural gas. But since the global fallout after the invasion, Russia is setting its sights on China as a new market for the country’s gas and as an important ally.
The proposed Power of Siberia 2 pipeline would transport Russian natural gas to China via Mongolia. The project is a window into Russia’s energy export strategy and the evolving relationship between China and Russia.
So what is the strategic importance of Chinese-Russian energy diplomacy? How significant was Russia’s loss of the European gas market? And has Europe left its energy crisis behind?
This week host Jason Bordoff talks with Erica Downs, Akos Losz, and Tatiana Mitrova about their recent CGEP commentary, The Future of the Power of Siberia 2 Pipeline. They discuss the geopolitical significance of the proposed pipeline and the evolving Russia-China relationship. They also cover a range of other topics including the outlook for European energy security and climate goals, China’s energy demand, and the global gas market.
Erica is a senior research scholar at CGEP focusing on Chinese energy markets and geopolitics. She previously worked as a senior research scientist in the China Studies program of the CNA Corporation.
Akos is a former senior research associate at CGEP where he specialized in natural gas markets and the role of gas in the energy transition. He recently left CGEP and is returning to the International Energy Agency as its lead natural gas analyst.
And Tatiana is a research fellow at CGEP. She’s spent her career focusing on Russia and global energy markets. Tatiana previously served as the executive director of the Energy Centre of the Moscow School of Management and the head of research in the Oil and Gas Department in the Energy Research Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences. She is also an independent director of SLB, the large energy services firm.
(Note: This conversation was taped prior to President Joe Biden’s July 21, 2024 announcement that he was suspending his campaign for a second term in office.)
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Energy is central to economic development, and access to energy is intrinsically linked to prosperity. As standards of living improve, energy use could double by the end of the century with a majority of this growth occurring in the developing world. Meeting this demand with zero-carbon, affordable energy is a herculean task.
Powering economic growth with zero and low-carbon energy resources will require both the development of new technologies and the rapid deployment of existing technologies. But reinventing the global energy mix continues to be extremely challenging, and there are open questions regarding the affordability and feasibility of new technologies.
Why is energy so important for development? And where are the opportunities for innovation in the energy transition?
This week host Jason Bordoff talks with Eric Toone about the intersection of energy and economic development, and the challenge of increasing energy access in the developing world while rapidly cutting emissions.
Eric is the technical lead on the Investment Committee at Breakthrough Energy Ventures. Before joining Breakthrough in 2017, he was the vice provost and director of the Duke University Innovation and Entrepreneurship Initiative, and a professor of chemistry and biochemistry at Duke.
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On June 28, 2024, the U.S. Supreme Court overturned a 40-year precedent established in the landmark 1984 case, Chevron v. Natural Resources Defense Council.
The precedent, commonly referred to as the “Chevron Doctrine,” gave federal agencies considerable discretion to interpret laws passed by Congress when implementing regulations and policy. But with the court’s new ruling, federal agencies no longer have the final say on how laws are interpreted. Instead, the judiciary will hold that power.
So, how will the new ruling impact energy policy and environmental regulation? What are both proponents and opponents saying about the court’s decision? And what does this mean more broadly for the modern administrative state?
This week host Bill Loveless talks with Michael Gerrard and Jeff Holmstead about the implications of the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn the Chevron Doctrine.
Michael is the founder and faculty director of Columbia’s Sabin Center for Climate Change Law. From 2012 to 2018, he was the chair of the faculty of Columbia University’s Earth Institute. Before joining Columbia in 2009, Michael practiced environmental law in New York for three decades.
Jeff is a partner and co-chair of the Environmental Strategies Group at Bracewell LLP. From 2001 to 2005, he served as the assistant administrator for air and radiation in the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
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Throughout the world, climate change is influencing human mobility.
In a 2022 report, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change found that devastating floods and storms have triggered the displacement of 20 million people per year since 2008. While migration is influenced by many factors, including socio-economic status and political stability, research by the IPCC and others tells us that climate change is increasingly significant.
So, how is climate change impacting human mobility? And what can policymakers do to address climate migration?
This week host Bill Loveless talks with Shana Tabak about how climate change influences migration both within and across borders.
Shana is a human rights lawyer and the director of immigration strategy at Emerson Collective, where she leads engagement at the intersection of global migration and the climate crisis. She is also an adjunct professor of human rights at the Georgetown University Law Center and an affiliated scholar with Georgetown’s Institute for the Study of International Migration.
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Demand for the critical minerals needed for batteries, solar panels, and other forms of clean energy will grow rapidly under the International Energy Agency's “net zero by 2050” scenario. And this gives mineral rich countries like Chile an outsized role in the energy transition.
Chile currently holds more than a third of the world's lithium reserves, and the country is already the world's second largest producer of lithium, with an approximately 25% share of world production. Chile also is the world's largest producer of copper, which will also be needed for a much more electrified economy.
So what is Chile's role in the energy transition more broadly? How will Chile's plans to nationalize its lithium industry play out? And how will the country be impacted by an escalating trade war between the U.S. and China?
This week host Jason Bordoff talks with Juan Carlos Jobet about Chile’s role in the global energy transition.
Juan Carlos is Chile’s former minister of energy and mining. He was recently appointed dean of the School of Business and Economics at Universidad Adolfo Ibáñez and is a distinguished visiting fellow at Columbia’s Center on Global Energy Policy. Throughout his career, he has held several positions in both the public and private sector. He served as undersecretary of housing and minister of labor and social security, and previously worked as an investment banker and in private equity.
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Recent elections in the European Union shook up the continent’s climate politics. Far-right parties performed well in both the EU’s parliament and national governments, and the Greens lost nearly all of their gains over the past five years in the European parliament. Voters pointed to energy costs, security, and economic competitiveness as key factors in their decision-making.
So what do these elections indicate about the shifting political ideology of the European Union? How will they impact Europe’s relations with the U.S. and China? And what do these elections mean for European climate and energy policy?
This week, host Jason Bordoff talks with Ann Mettler, vice president for Europe at Breakthrough Energy, a network of investment funds, philanthropies, and nonprofits dedicated to scaling low-carbon technologies. She previously served as director-general at the European Commission, where she ran an in-house think tank called the European Political Strategy Centre. Prior to that, she was the executive director of the Lisbon Council, an economic policy think tank she founded in 2003.
Jason and Ann discuss the results of the recent European elections, the economic competitiveness challenges facing the European Union, and Ann’s views on Europe’s new tariffs on China.
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In the next few months, heat waves, droughts, thunderstorms, and hurricanes will wreak havoc on regions around the world. Climate scientists say these events are becoming more extreme and dangerous thanks in part to the changing climate.
For example, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s outlook for the 2024 hurricane season, which just started June 1, anticipates an exceptionally high number of storms this year.
So, why are extreme weather events worsening? How is climate change contributing to this development? And what measures are being taken to adapt to this new reality?
This week host Bill Loveless talks with Radley Horton about the outlook for extreme weather events across the globe this summer, and why the intensity and severity of them is expected to increase.
Radley is a professor at the Columbia Climate School, where he teaches and researches climate extremes, risks, impacts, and adaptation. He was a convening lead author for the United States’ Third National Climate Assessment, and he is currently a principal investigator for NOAA, focusing on climate risk in the urban U.S. Northeast.
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The elections for the European Parliament will take place in a couple of days, and polls currently suggest the Parliament will undergo a rightward shift.
The last elections five years ago in 2019 saw major electoral gains for the environmentalist parties and popular support for ambitious energy transition plans. But the upcoming elections come following a tumultuous few years for the continent that included an energy crisis and an economic crisis.
So how will the upcoming elections impact Europe's energy transition? And how will Europe balance the needs for more rapid climate action, energy security and economic competitiveness?
This week host Jason Bordoff talks with Dominique Ristori about how Europe will accelerate its clean energy progress and enhance its energy security.
Dominique is the former director general energy of the European Commission. He currently is a senior advisor at Dentons Global Advisors. Dominique began his career at the European Commission in 1978 and held several senior positions throughout his career. Prior to his role as director general energy, he was director-general of the Joint Research Center.
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On May 8th, the U.S. Department of Energy proposed ten new “national interest electric transmission corridors” – a designation that allows the federal government to accelerate projects in areas where consumers are harmed by lack of transmission.
Days later, on the 13th, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission released Orders 1920 and 1977. Both of the new rules aim to expedite the build out of the nation’s electric grid by tackling major issues such as cost allocation and long-term planning.
So, how will these actions from the federal government impact transmission projects? What are critics of the FERC rules saying? And why are these long-awaited reforms happening now?
This week host Bill Loveless talks with Rob Gramlich about the impact the new FERC rules will have on current and future transmission projects.
Rob is the founder and president of Grid Strategies, a consulting firm focused on transmission and power markets. He has co-founded multiple organizations focused on power systems reliability and sustainability, including Americans for a Clean Energy Grid and the Working for Advanced Transmission Technologies Coalition. From 2001-2005, Rob served as an economic advisor to FERC chairman Pat Wood. -
Industry accounts for one-third of global greenhouse gas emissions, a share that will only increase in the coming years.
Other high-emission sectors, like electric power and transportation, are cutting emissions through renewables and electrification. But the pathways to reducing emissions from manufacturing materials such as iron, steel, chemicals, cement, and concrete are still unclear.
A new book by Jeffrey Rissman, titled Zero-Carbon Industry: Transformative Technologies and Policies to Achieve Sustainable Prosperity., dives into the nuances of industrial decarbonization and lays out a roadmap for eliminating greenhouse gas emissions between 2050 and 2070.
So, what are some of the pathways for reducing manufacturing emissions? And how can policy support decarbonization?
This week host Bill Loveless talks with Jeffrey about his book and its look at the workings of heavy industrial polluters and the ways to affordably decarbonize manufacturing.
Jeffrey is the senior director of the industry program at Energy Innovation, a nonpartisan energy and climate policy firm, where he leads the company’s work on technologies and policies to eliminate greenhouse gas emissions from the industry sector.
Zero-Carbon Industry is part of the Center on Global Energy Policy’s book series, and is published by Columbia University Press.
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In April, the Environmental Protection Agency passed four new rules to reduce pollution from fossil fuel-fired power plants.
One of the new rules requires many new gas and existing coal power plants to control 90 percent of their carbon pollution if they plan to operate beyond 2039. The other three rules specifically target coal, requiring the industry to clean up various parts of the value chain including toxic metal emissions from power generation, wastewater pollution, and coal ash management.
And while the Biden Administration and other proponents consider the new rules a step in the right direction, opponents argue they will undermine the reliability of energy systems.
So, how will the EPA’s new regulations impact the energy industry? What makes these standards different from previous attempts to regulate energy emissions? And how might opponents try to overturn them?
This week host Bill Loveless talks with Jody Freeman about the technicalities of the new EPA power plant rules, and the legal avenues opponents might pursue to overturn them.
Jody is the Archibald Cox professor of law and the founding director of the Harvard Law School Environmental & Energy Law Program. From 2009-2010, she served as a counselor for energy and climate change in the Obama White House. Jody has also previously served on the Advisory Council of the Electric Power Research Institute and as an independent director of ConocoPhillips.
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Indonesia’s economy is closely tied to its natural resources. It’s the world’s fourth largest producer of coal, and Southeast Asia’s largest gas supplier.
But even with its connection to fossil fuels, the country’s population strongly supports climate goals. In this year’s presidential election, every candidate advocated for the energy transition and more renewables.
At the same time, like many developing countries, Indonesia needs energy security, increased access to energy, and affordability. These factors complicate the energy transition, and could prolong the use of existing fossil fuel infrastructure and abundant coal resources.
So, how can Indonesian policymakers balance economic development and the energy transition? What is the role of renewables in meeting the country’s growing energy demands? And how can Indonesia collaborate in energy with other Asian nations?
This week host Bill Loveless talks with Mari Pangestu about the efforts to build a clean energy economy in Indonesia.
Mari is a distinguished visiting fellow at the Center on Global Energy Policy. From 2020 to 2023, she served as the managing director of development policies and partnerships at the World Bank. Prior to joining the World Bank, Mari served as Indonesia’s minister of trade and as minister of tourism and creative economy.
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