Columbia Energy Exchange

The energy sector landscape is experiencing profound change, complexity and uncertainty--from the impacts of Covid-19 on the global economy and the prospect of reaching peak oil demand, to a rapidly rising recognition of the urgency of combating climate change and accelerated investments in low-carbon technologies. The United Arab Emirates is at the center of these shifts, both as a major Middle Eastern producer of oil and gas but also as an investor in new emerging technologies and low-carbon energy sources. 

In this edition of Columbia Energy Exchange, host Jason Bordoff is joined by Musabbeh Al Kaabi, Chief Executive Officer of the Petroleum & Petrochemicals platform at Mubadala, a sovereign investment firm in Abu Dhabi. Jason and Musabbeh discuss what sectors and regions a company like Mubadala is prioritizing in its investment decisions, particularly in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic and ambitious regional and corporate carbon policy commitments. 

Prior to his current role, Musabbeh was the CEO of Mubadala Petroleum, Mubadala’s exploration and production company, from 2014 to 2017. Musabbeh holds a degree in Geophysical Engineering from Colorado School of Mines and a Master of Science in Petroleum Geoscience from Imperial College, London.

The offshore wind energy industry is on the cusp of breaking out in the U.S., with the government anticipating 2,000 turbines with 22 gigawatts of capacity in federal waters in the Atlantic Ocean over 10 years.

In this episode of Columbia Energy Exchange, host Bill Loveless is joined by Thomas Brostrøm, whose company is a leader in the industry around the world. Thomas is the president of Ørsted North America and CEO for Ørsted U.S. Offshore Wind. He joined Bill from Boston to talk about plans that Ørsted Energy has to build wind farms in waters up and down the U.S. East Coast.

All told, Ørsted has 10 offshore wind farms in the U.S., including ones in Rhode Island and Virginia that are the first to operate in this country.

Throughout the world, Ørsted has built more offshore wind farms than any other developer. By 2022, it expects to expand its offshore wind capacity to nearly 10 gigawatts, with projects in the U.S., Europe and Asia.

This from a business once known as Danish Oil and Gas Company. Thomas and Bill talk about the transition that Ørsted has undergone in recent years and whether it serves as a model for other fossil fuel companies looking to move into greener forms of energy.

They also look at the policy and economic factors promoting investments in U.S. offshore wind by Ørsted and other companies, the economic development that could accompany the industry’s emergence here, and the challenges it faces in moving ahead.

Prior to joining Ørsted, Thomas was in the investment banking and venture capital business.

Building a low-carbon future will bring significant change to the U.S. economy, especially to employment as alternative forms of energy increasingly take hold. And to go smoothly, that transition will require sound public policy and public support.

In this edition of Columbia Energy Exchange, host Bill Loveless talks to Richard Trumka, the president and CEO of the AFL-CIO, and former U.S. Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz, the president and CEO of the Energy Futures Initiative. Earlier this year, their organizations formed the Labor Energy Partnership to promote energy policies that promote economic, racial and gender equity based on quality jobs and the preservation of workers’ rights, all the while addressing the growing climate crisis.

In exclusive podcast discussion, President Trumka and Secretary Moniz explain a new report by the Labor Energy Partnership that lays out the opportunities and pitfalls of such sweeping changes in the economy. The report, called “Energy Transitions: The Framework for Good Jobs in a Low-CarbonFuture,” makes the case that this industrial transition is both different from those in the past and urgently needed because of the existential threat of climate change.

The report opens by acknowledging that industrial transitions have rarely been smooth. In fact, it notes they have been typically marked by community and worker dislocations with significant regional disparities, disproportionate impacts on minority communities, and fraying of existing social institutions.

The AFL-CIO is the largest federation of unions in the U.S., and the Energy Futures Initiative is a Washington-based non-profit dedicated to promoting a clean-energy future.

Richard Trumka was elected president of the AFL-CIO in 2009 after having served as secretary treasurer of the federation since 1995. Previously, he was president of the United Mine Workers from 1982 to 1995.

Ernest Moniz founded the Energy Futures Initiative in 2017. He is also the co-chair and CEO of the Nuclear Threat Initiative. Dr. Moniz was the U.S. energy secretary from 2013 to 2017 and an under secretary at the U.S. Department of Energy from 1997 to 2001.

A long-time member of the faculty at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, he was also founding director of the MIT Energy Initiative.

In his latest book, The New Map: Energy, Climate, and the Clash of Nations,” noted energy historian Daniel Yergin captures a screenshot of the energy world as it stands in 2020, both in the shifting balance and rising tensions among nations, and in the dramatic reshaping of global energy supplies and flows. Understanding how geopolitics and energy interact is no easy feat, as even before this year’s coronavirus-induced shock to the global energy markets, the landscape was already being rapidly transformed by such factors as the American-led shale revolution, a new cold war between the United States and Russia, deep tensions in the U.S.-China relationship, the Middle East’s own reckoning with the energy transition, and of course, the urgent challenge of climate change. 

Daniel Yergin is a highly respected authority on energy, international politics, and economics. His classic book, The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money and Power, became a bestseller, won a Pulitzer Prize, and put Dr. Yergin on the map as one of the world’s leading thinkers on energy and its vast geopolitical and economic implications. In decades since, Dan has continued to chronicle the global energy system. Going back to Shattered Peace, his first book, his writings from The Prize, updated in 20008, to The Quest and many others have provided the historical perspective for understanding many of today’s energy and security challenges. 

In this edition of Columbia Energy Exchange, host Jason Bordoff is joined by Dr. Yergin to discuss his new book and what's ahead for energy geopolitics and the energy transition. 

Daniel Yergin is vice chairman of IHS Markit and co-founder of Cambridge Energy Research Associates. Daniel received the United States Energy Award for “lifelong achievements in energy and the promotion of international understanding,” and the U.S. Department of Energy awarded him the first James Schlesinger Medal for Energy Security. 

Dr. Yergin is a director of the Council on Foreign Relations and a senior trustee of the Brookings Institution. He is a member of the National Petroleum Council, a director of the United States Energy Association, and of the US-Russia Business Council. He is a member of the Advisory Boards of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Energy Initiative and of the Columbia University Center on Global Energy Policy and of Singapore’s International Energy Advisory Board. Dr. Yergin holds a BA from Yale University, where he founded The New Journal, and a PhD from Cambridge University, where he was a Marshall Scholar.

For the first time in nearly 20 years, California experienced rolling blackouts in August as record high temperatures placed unusual stress on the state’s electric power grid. The inconvenience to millions of Californians raised questions about the reliability of the grid as the state implements aggressive policies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions through greater reliance on solar and wind power and other cleaner energy solutions.

In this edition of Columbia Energy Exchange, host Bill Loveless reached out to Cheryl LaFleur, a former chairman of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission and a distinguished visiting fellow at the Center on Global Energy Policy, for her take on the blackouts, which she wrote about in an op-ed in “State of the Planet,” an online blog at Columbia University’s Earth Institute.

They talk about what caused the blackouts during the weekend of August 14, when an extreme heat wave blanketed California and other western states, as well as how they compared to the last such occurrences during the California energy crisis of 2001.

In short, Cheryl says, the problem isn’t California’s solar and wind systems, which operated just as they were supposed to do, but rather the state’s failure to make sure there were other energy resources to meet peak demands for electricity – especially for air conditioning to cope with the heat – when the sun wasn’t shining and the wind wasn’t blowing. Adding to the difficulty is California’s preference to control its own power market rather than participate in a regional market, she says.

Bill and Cheryl discuss that as well as the political fall-out from the blackouts, with critics of the state’s climate policies claiming those measures risk the reliability of the California grid, while supporters of those policies saying they’re as necessary as ever to combat climate change.

Of course, with California and much of the rest of the Pacific Northwest suffering from a record spree of wildfires, there’s no avoiding talking about the magnitude of climate-related catastrophes occurring now and the extent to which they affect efforts to transition to cleaner, reliable forms of energy.

Cheryl was one of the longest-serving members of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, nominated by President Obama in 2010 and serving until 2019. She was the chairman from 2014-15 and acting chairman from 2013-14 and in 2017.

Earlier, she had more than 20 years of experience as a leader in the electric and natural gas industry, including serving as executive vice president and acting CEO of National Grid USA.

2020 has been a historic year in energy markets, with a dramatic price crash caused by a collapse in economic activity resulting from the pandemic. In recent weeks, major oil and gas companies around the world have been reporting their worst quarterly results in history and seem to be positioning themselves for prolonged pain still to come. Yet we have also seen several companies reaffirm commitments to a net-zero carbon future by 2050, and we continue to have rising concern and evidence of the tangible impacts of climate change around the world. This all raises the question of whether the pandemic will be an accelerator or decelerator of the energy transition, and how leading oil and gas companies are responding to today’s uncertain and challenging environment. 

In this edition of Columbia Energy Exchange, host Jason Bordoff is joined by Mario Mehren, who leads the largest independent oil and gas company in Europe. 

Mario Mehren is the Chief Executive Officer and Chairman of the Board of Wintershall Dea. He was previously responsible for the company’s activities in Exploration and Production in Russia, North Africa and South Africa. Before joining Wintershall, Mario worked as a specialist adviser in the BASF Group’s Corporate Finance Department before becoming the Head of Finance and Accounting at BASF Schwarzheide and later its Managing Director of Finance and Administration. Mario studied business administration at Saarland University in Saarbrüken. 

Politics is critical to understanding the development of climate policy in the United States, particularly the interest groups influencing the process and the feedback that new laws and regulations experience once they have been enacted.

That’s what political scientist Leah Stokes tells us in her new book, “Short Circuiting Policy,” whose subtitle is “Interest Groups and the Battle Over Clean Energy and Climate Policy in the American States.”

In this episode of Columbia Energy Exchange, host Bill Loveless talks with Leah about her book and its look at climate policies in different states. The discussion is particularly timely now in the aftermath of a scandal in Ohio, one of the states she writes about in the book.

Bill and Leah delve into the situation in Ohio, where an FBI investigation involving a state law providing aid to struggling nuclear and coal power plants led to the arrest of a prominent state legislator and others in an alleged bribery scheme.

They also discuss the ebb and flow of climate policies in states as utilities and other interest groups vie over proposals to implement policies that would reduce greenhouse gas emissions from power plants.

Leah is an assistant professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and affiliated with the Bren School of Environmental Science and Management and the Environmental Studies Department at UC, Santa Barbara.

She completed her PhD in public policy at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Department of Urban Studies and Planning and a master’s degree from MIT’s Political Science Department. Before that, she earned an MPA in environmental science and policy at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs and the Earth Institute, as well as a Bachelor of Science degree in psychology and East Asian studies at the University of Toronto.

She’s also worked at the Canadian Parliament and the think tank Resources for the Future.