Energy Security
Reports
Web workshop with the office of the Principal Accountant General (Audit), Bihar
Webinar: How COVID-19 and the oil shock will reshape the Middle East
Webinar: Electricity Discoms in India post-COVID-19: Untangling the short-run from the “new normal”
David G. Victor
Nonresident Senior Fellow - Foreign Policy, Energy Security and Climate Initiative
Rahul Tongia
Nonresident Senior Fellow - Foreign Policy, Energy Security and Climate Initiative
On November 11, Todd Stern discussed prospects for international diplomatic efforts on climate change amid the political isolationism of the COVID-19 era at the Financial Times’s Global Boardroom conference.
[On energy density and challenges in the energy transition] Pound for pound, gasoline or diesel fuel contain about 40 times as much energy as a state-of-the-art battery.
[On challenges in the energy transition] It’s going to take time to replace these uses where fossil fuels are hardest to replace. We aren’t going to be completely out of fossil fuels for a while. The idea that we could stop using fossil fuels right now means that the economy comes to a screeching halt, and we don’t really want that. The idea is to halt climate change for people so that we can continue to have the kind of lives that we’re accustomed to, and leave this environment that we enjoy to our kids and our grandkids. Halting the economy isn’t the way to do that.
[On the U.S. coal and why environmental rollbacks have not helped the industry] The problem there is, if you’re really focused on ‘We’re going to bring this resource back,’ then you don’t help those communities; [instead] you tell them their jobs are coming back.
China has launched a potentially massive transformation of its green enterprise, one intended to improve the economic efficiency of a Green China Inc. that has, in fundamental ways, grown soft. That is an opportunity for Western capitalists as much as for Chinese ones — to say nothing of the planet.
