Energy Policy Now

An expert in international trade policy discusses the Biden Administration’s use of the Defense Production Act, and tariff restrictions, to build a competitive US solar supply chain. --- In early June the Biden Administration invoked the Defense Production Act in an effort to rebuild America’s domestic solar energy manufacturing supply. Simultaneously, the Administration announced that...

Advanced Energy Economy’s Leah Rubin Shen discusses energy spending priorities in the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act. --- In November President Biden signed into law the signature legislation of his Presidency to date, the $1.2 trillion bipartisan infrastructure bill, also known as the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act. The bill includes more than $100 billion dollars in funding...

Two experts on mining industry governance explore environmental and social challenges around the mining of cobalt, a critical material in EV batteries, in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. --- This is the third episode in our series that explores governance challenges surrounding the transition to clean energy. The International Energy Agency forecasts that electric vehicles could account for...

As net zero carbon targets become commonplace, strong governance will be needed to ensure climate benefits. --- This is the second episode in a three-part series exploring governance challenges surrounding the transition to clean energy. In recent years a flood of net zero emissions targets have been set by companies, municipalities, and countries around the world. In fact, over-two thirds of the...

Shuchi Talati, former chief of staff of the Department of Energy’s Office of Fossil Energy & Carbon Management, discusses the need for strong governance to balance the potential benefits of carbon dioxide removal technologies with environmental and social risks. --- This episode is the first in a three-part series that will explore governance challenges surrounding the transition to clea...

Economist Lord Nicholas Stern discusses why traditional economics fail to capture the magnitude of threat presented by climate change, and how the discipline must adapt. --- In 2006 climate economist Nicholas Stern published the Stern Review on the Economics of Climate Change, a report that offered the first systematic examination of the costs of addressing climate change and impacts on the global...

An expert in energy geopolitics discusses the war in Ukraine and its implications for European energy security and decarbonization. The episode was recorded in front of a live audience. --- Anna Mikulska, lecturer in Russian and East European Studies at the University of Pennsylvania and an expert in European energy geopolitics, discusses the history of escalating energy tensions between Russia, U...

An energy activist highlights the opportunities, and challenges on the way to clean and equitable energy in the United States. --- The energy transition that is now underway in the United States holds the promise of delivering carbon free energy by the middle of this century. Yet often overlooked is a second critical opportunity to ensure that our future energy system delivers benefits, and shares...

The transition to a clean energy economy will generate millions of new jobs. Unions are working to ensure that those jobs provide a living wage. --- Dramatic changes are underway in the ways that the United States produces and consumes energy, with major implications for the country’s workforce. Along the Atlantic shore, states are racing to establish large offshore wind farms and the manufa...

ProPublica's Alec MacGillis discusses his recent New Yorker magazine article on Germany’s protracted struggle to wean itself off of coal. --- Germany has earned a reputation as a leader in the effort to lower greenhouse gas emissions, and today counts some of the highest rates of renewable energy in the world. Yet one of the continuing ironies of Germany’s energy transition is that the countr...

Rising global LNG demand points to a strong future for U.S. LNG exports. But ESG concerns loom.   --- Over the past decade, fracking technology has driven unprecedented growth in American natural gas production. Gas now powers 40% of U.S. electricity generation, and is also the most important fuel for home heating. And the U.S. is on track to become the world’s number one exporter of liquified nat...

A financier discusses the challenge of managing clean energy investment risk. --- The transition to a clean U.S. energy system, including carbon-free electricity by the middle of the next decade, will be fueled by massive investment from government and industry and through the provision of green finance from banks and investors.  Brian Lehman, the Head of Green Economy Banking at JP Morgan Chase,...

A climate economist discusses why efforts to cool earth’s climate through solar geoengineering appear all but inevitable, and considers the policy questions and political battles to come. --- There is no overarching, national debate into the merits of solar geoengineering, which is process to artificially cool the Earth by reflecting sunlight back into space. The technology sounds fanciful, the st...

Who will pay for the electric grid of the future? The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission explores options to incentivize and finance a vast transmission network to support clean energy. --- Much of the fossil fuel generation fleet in the United States will be replaced by renewable energy resources as the country’s electricity system is decarbonized. Yet it remains unclear how the vast network of...

China’s leadership must navigate conflicting agendas, and threats to domestic political stability, as it seeks to rein in global warming emissions. --- China has adopted a relatively low profile of late when it comes to addressing climate change. At the COP 26 climate conference in Glasgow, Scotland, the most notable headline concerning China may in fact have been the failure of its President, Chi...

An unprecedented backlog of clean energy projects is in line to join PJM Interconnection, an electricity market serving one in five Americans.  --- PJM Interconnection, the largest wholesale electricity market in the U.S., is on the verge of going solar in a big way. The market, which encompasses 13 states from the mid-Atlantic shore, through fossil fuel-rich Pennsylvania and Ohio and as far West...

A climate economist looks at the impact that the stranding of fossil fuel assets may have on communities, and at policies that might mitigate economic hardship.  --- As pressure builds to decarbonize the global energy system, much of today’s energy infrastructure is becoming obsolete. Over the past decade more than half of the coal fired power plants in the United States have closed as coal genera...

Hurricane Ida was the most recent storm to wreak havoc on Louisiana’s electric grid.  A legal expert discusses the struggle to provide resilient power in the state as weather and climate risks grow. --- The year 2021 has seen an unprecedented number of large-scale electric grid failures driven by extreme weather. Over the winter, severe cold led to the collapse of Texas’ electricity system, while...

A leading energy economist explores the cost of electrifying home heating, the top source of energy demand and carbon emissions in American homes. --- Residential homes account for one fifth of America’s energy consumption, with the largest part of that consumption going toward home heating. In the U.S., more homes are heated with natural gas than any other fuel, a fact that has drawn the attentio...

Rare earth elements are essential to many clean energy technologies, yet their production can bring severe environmental impacts. A new report grapples with rare earths' environmental negatives and efforts to diversify supply beyond China.  —-  In 2010 China withheld shipment of rare earth elements to Japan during a territorial dispute between the two countries. Rare earths, a grouping of 17...

The head of the International Energy Agency’s gas division discusses the outlook for natural gas as global efforts to address carbon emissions intensify. --- Natural gas may be the most controversial of all fossil fuels. It has been heralded as a lower carbon alternative to coal as a fuel for electricity generation. At the same time, natural gas-fired generators have proven themselves to be a reli...

America’s electric grid is ill-equipped to enable the low carbon energy system of the future.  A grid policy expert explores the policy and economic changes that will be needed to bring the grid up to date.  --- There is little doubt that the electricity system of the future will look very different from the system that we have today. In the U.S., a growing number of states and the federal governm...

Congress has directed the nation’s regulator for natural gas and electricity infrastructure to be more responsive to community and environmental concerns. Will FERC’s new Office of Public Participation deliver on the promise of public inclusion? --- The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission increasingly finds itself at the center of controversy as momentum in the United States builds for a cleaner...

Heidi Binko, Executive Director of the Just Transition Fund, discusses the challenges coal communities face in adapting to a post-coal future, and strategies for economic transition. --- Over the past decade the number of workers directly employed in the U.S. coal industry has fallen by half, as coal has been replaced by cheaper sources of energy such as natural gas and renewable power. From the A...

Sheila Oparaocha of the International Network on Gender and Sustainability discusses the global effort to ensure gender equality in energy access, as an essential foundation for economic development and public health.   --- One billion people around the world lack access to electricity, and three times as many do not have access to fuel and appliances that allow for clean and safe cooking inside t...