In July, the Trump administration released what it calls an AI action plan. In it, along with several executive orders, the White House lays out its vision for building and expanding the country’s AI infrastructure. 

Key tenets of that vision include removing regulatory hurdles and accelerating US dominance in the industry. It also has broad energy and security implications.

So how could the administration's high-risk, high-reward approach increase US market share in AI? Will it create tensions with major AI companies while potentially democratizing access to AI capabilities? And how does the plan diverge from Biden-era AI support, especially around environmental and energy considerations?

To discuss the action plan, we convened some of the leading AI experts at the Center for Global Energy Policy in early August, and this week on Columbia Energy Exchange we are sharing an audio recording of their discussion. 

David Sandalow, CGEP’s inaugural fellow and the host of the AI, Energy and Climate podcast, moderated the panel. David also co-directs the Energy and Environment Concentration at the School of International and Public Affairs at Columbia University and was the lead author of the “Artificial Intelligence for Climate Change Mitigation Roadmap” report for the Innovation for Cool Earth Forum.

Aaron Bartnick, Jared Dunnmon, and Ashley Finan joined David on the webinar.

Aaron Bartnick is a global fellow at CGEP, where he focuses on technology and economic security. He also serves as chief of staff at the neural engineering company Science Corporation and as a fellow at Carnegie Mellon University’s Critical Technology Initiative.

Jared Dunnmon is a non-resident CGEP fellow and the co-founder and chief scientist of a maritime logistics startup. He previously served in the Department of Defense as technical director for artificial intelligence at the Defense Innovation Unit, was vice president of future technologies at battery firm Our Next Energy, and was an early team member at Snorkel AI.

Ashley Finan is a CGEP global fellow who previously served in senior leadership roles at Idaho National Laboratory, where she worked on nuclear energy and national security issues. 

Credits: Hosted by Jason Bordoff and Bill Loveless. Produced by Mary Catherine O’Connor, Caroline Pitman, and Kyu Lee. Engineering by Gregory Vilfranc.

After President Trump and Indian Prime Minister Modi met in the White House back in February, US-India relations appeared to be on solid ground. Back then, Trump was still confident he could broker a quick resolution in Russia’s war against Ukraine. 

Then, last week, the Trump administration said that if India continues to import Russian oil, the US will double tariffs on Indian goods, starting August 27. This move threatens to undermine relations between the US and India — and it could impact more than India’s energy imports. The dispute is forcing bigger questions about India’s approach to foreign policy and the country’s long-standing policy of strategic autonomy.

So will India bow to US pressure and reduce its Russian energy imports? Or will India continue to import a significant amount of oil from Russia? And what does all of this mean for global energy markets  and the use of coercive economic tools like tariffs or sanctions in the years ahead?

In this special episode of Columbia Energy Exchange, Jason speaks with Richard Nephew, Tatiana Mitrova, and Shayak Sengupta about this latest development in President Trump’s trade war.

Richard Nephew is a senior research scholar at the Center on Global Energy Policy (CGEP) and former US Deputy Special Envoy for Iran, where he played key roles in economic sanctions policy.

Tatiana Mitrova is a global fellow at CGEP and former deputy director general of the National Energy Security Fund in Moscow. She brings deep expertise on Russian energy markets.

Shayak Sengupta is a senior research associate at CGEP and leads its India program. He’s an expert in South Asian energy policy and US-India relations.

Credits: Hosted by Jason Bordoff and Bill Loveless. Produced by Mary Catherine O’Connor, Caroline Pitman, and Kyu Lee. Engineering by James Rowlands.

President Trump’s threat to double tariffs on Indian goods, to 50%, as punishment for the country’s continued purchase of Russian oil, puts India in an untenable position. The US is its top export market, but India is deeply reliant on importing energy to support the needs of its 1.4 billion people.

As the world's most populous nation and one of its fastest-growing economies, India faces unprecedented energy demands and also pressure to meet that demand with clean energy. Today, around 70 percent of the country’s electricity comes from coal — a major contributor to air pollution in India’s large cities.

So how can India meet its fast-growing energy needs while also ensuring energy affordability, equity, and public health? Where is India in making progress toward deploying clean energy? What role might conventional energy continue to play? And how does India’s relationship with China factor into its decarbonization efforts?

This week, Jason talks to Sunita Narain about the state of India’s clean energy transition.

Sunita is executive director of the Centre for Science and Environment, a research and advocacy center where she has worked since 1982. In 2016, Time magazine named her one of the 100 most influential people in the world. 

Credits: Hosted by Jason Bordoff and Bill Loveless. Produced by Mary Catherine O’Connor, Caroline Pitman, and Kyu Lee. Engineering by Gregory Vilfranc.

The US Environmental Protection Agency plans to rescind the foundation of its authority to regulate greenhouse gas emissions under the Clean Air Act. 

Eliminating the so-called “endangerment finding” is a key part of President Trump’s efforts to reverse Obama- and Biden-era climate policy. The finding was also targeted in the conservative Project 2025 strategy to reshape the federal government. But the rollback won’t happen without a fight, and the endangerment finding has held up to past legal challenges.

Meanwhile, international courts are moving in the opposite direction. The International Court of Justice recently ruled that countries have legal obligations to address climate change and that fossil fuel subsidies could constitute "internationally wrongful acts."

So what would overturning the endangerment finding mean for US climate policy? What legal and scientific arguments is the administration using? And how do these conflicting domestic and international trends shape the future of energy and climate policy?

This week, Bill speaks to Michael Gerrard about how the EPA is rescinding its own ability to regulate greenhouse gases.

Michael is the founder and faculty director of Columbia’s Sabin Center for Climate Change Law. Before joining Columbia in 2009, Michael practiced environmental law in New York for three decades.

Credits: Hosted by Jason Bordoff and Bill Loveless. Produced by Mary Catherine O’Connor, Caroline Pitman, and Kyu Lee. Engineering by Gregory Vilfranc.

Six months in, President Trump’s trade war has entered a new phase. Just this weekend, the European Union agreed to a trade deal that includes a promise to buy $750 billion worth of American energy products over the next three years. And this week, with the August 1 tariff deadline looming, the US and China have restarted negotiations.

Trump has been using tools of economic warfare since his first term. And the Biden administration embraced policies such as steep tariffs on electric vehicle imports from China, and levying sanctions against Russia aimed at stifling its energy sector. 

These economic chokepoints are part of a broader shift of the global economy. Countries are weaponizing economic power through sanctions, tariffs, and export controls — tools that were designed before the complex geopolitical competition we see today. 

So how did we get here? What does this new age of economic warfare mean for global stability and the global economy? And how might these tools reshape everything from energy markets to global banking systems in the years ahead?

This week, we’re revisiting a conversation Jason Bordoff had with Eddie Fishman about his book "Chokepoints: American Power in the Age of Economic Warfare," which came out in February. The book traces the evolution of economic warfare from the “War on Terror” to today's great power competition.

Eddie is a senior research scholar at the Center on Global Energy Policy and an adjunct professor at Columbia University SIPA. He also serves as an adjunct senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security and a nonresident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council.

Credits: Hosted by Jason Bordoff and Bill Loveless. Produced by Mary Catherine O’Connor, Caroline Pitman, and Kyu Lee. Additional support from Martina Chow and Richard Nephew. This episode was engineered by Sean Marquand and Gregory Vilfranc.

Note: This episode is a re-run. It was originally published on February 11, 2025.

Countries around the world, including the US, are rushing to secure critical mineral supply chains. As these essential resources, which are key to building clean energy infrastructure, become a major focus in policy and trade discussions, Latin America sits at the center of the competition. It is home to vast lithium reserves in the Lithium Triangle and it holds nearly 40% of the world's copper deposits. 

But recent price volatility and geopolitical concerns have created new challenges. Early this month, President Trump announced a 50% tariff on copper imports, further jolting markets as copper prices jumped over 13% in a single day. 

So how are countries in the region navigating these new trade and market realities? Can Latin America build mineral supply chains that are more resilient to geopolitical shocks? And how are these governments responding to the environmental and economic concerns of Indigenous and local communities?

This week, Jason speaks with Juan Carlos Jobet, Tom Moerenhout, and Diego Rivera Rivota about Latin America’s critical mineral supply chain.

Juan Carlos is the dean of the School of Business and Economics at Adolfo Ibáñez University and Chile's former Minister of Energy and Mining and a former distinguished visiting fellow at the Center on Global Energy Policy. 

Tom leads the Critical Materials Initiative at the Center on Global Energy Policy and is a professor at Columbia University's School of International and Public Affairs. 

Diego is a senior research associate at the Center on Global Energy Policy.

Credits: Hosted by Jason Bordoff and Bill Loveless. Produced by Mary Catherine O’Connor, Caroline Pitman, and Kyu Lee. Engineering by Gregory Vilfranc.

Many parts of the US have experienced brutal, deadly heat in recent weeks—and there’s plenty of summer left. Intense rainfall, made more likely by warming, dropped more than 15 inches of rain in central Texas, claiming more than 130 lives. In addition to the devastating human toll these weather events take, they expose critical vulnerabilities in our energy infrastructure.

Power grids are seeing tremendous demand from air conditioning, not to mention other factors including data centers. And of course, extreme weather events cause shocks that go well beyond power outages; they damage transmission lines and cascade across other critical infrastructure like water systems and healthcare facilities.

The question isn't whether climate change is reshaping energy security—it's how quickly we can adapt. As traditional definitions of national security expand to include climate threats, what will it take to build truly resilient energy systems.

This week, Bill Loveless speaks with Kate Guy about how extreme summer weather events are redefining energy security.

Kate is a senior fellow and managing director of the geopolitics of climate change and the energy transition at the Center on Global Energy Policy at Columbia SIPA.

Credits: Hosted by Jason Bordoff and Bill Loveless. Produced by Mary Catherine O’Connor, Caroline Pitman, and Kyu Lee. Engineering by Gregory Vilfranc.

Artificial intelligence is transforming our world — and the energy sector. Earlier this year, the International Energy Agency (IEA) released a comprehensive report examining both AI’s projected energy demands and how it  might reshape energy systems. But while headlines often raise alarms around electricity demand growth, the reality is more nuanced and complex.

While data centers currently account for just 1.5% of global electricity use, that share is expected to double by 2030, driven largely by the growth of AI. In some regions, particularly in the US, data centers could account for nearly half of all electricity demand growth in the coming years.

So how should we understand the relationship between AI and energy? What does this mean for power systems around the world? Is artificial intelligence a friend or foe to the clean energy transition?

This week, Jason Bordoff speaks with Laura Cozzi, about the IEA's findings on AI's energy demands.

Laura is the chief energy modeler at the International Energy Agency, and its director of sustainability, technology, and outlooks. She oversees the IEA's analytical work on energy, climate, and economic modeling, and led the team that produced the agency’s report on artificial intelligence and energy.

Credits: Hosted by Jason Bordoff and Bill Loveless. Produced by Mary Catherine O’Connor, Caroline Pitman, and Kyu Lee. Engineering by Gregory Vilfranc.

The global energy landscape is shifting right now. Geopolitical tensions in the Middle East, debates about peak oil demand, and waning support for climate action in some parts of the world are challenging long-held assumptions about the pace and scale of the energy transition.

Confronting these complex challenges requires an understanding of the forces that drive energy markets and prices. 

So where is global energy consumption headed? Are reports of oil's demise exaggerated? And as countries prioritize energy security and economic growth, what does "pragmatism" really mean for the energy transition?

This week, Jason Bordoff speaks with Arjun Murti about the state of global energy markets and of the energy transition.

Arjun is a partner with Veriten, an energy research and investment firm. He also publishes the Super-Spiked newsletter. Previously, Arjun served as co-director of Americas equity research for Goldman Sachs. Prior to that, he was a buy-side equity research analyst at J.P. Morgan Investment Management. He also serves on the Center on Global Energy Policy advisory board.

Credits: Hosted by Jason Bordoff and Bill Loveless. Produced by Mary Catherine O’Connor, Caroline Pitman, and Kyu Lee. Engineering by Sean Marquand. Stephen Lacey is executive producer.

Just two days after President Trump deployed America’s military to attack Iranian nuclear development sites, a shaky ceasefire between Israel and Iran brokered by President Trump emerged. So far, this deal appears to be holding, but there’s no formal ceasefire agreement in place—at least not yet.

It is clear that Iran’s nuclear infrastructure has suffered significant damage, but it’s not clear just how extensive that damage really is. That uncertainty leaves a lot of unanswered questions about where things go from here.

Will there be a formal ceasefire in the coming days? How did energy markets react to the rapid de-escalation? And is this conflict really over?

To help unpack the latest, leading experts at the Center on Global Energy Policy, Columbia University SIPA joined Jason Bordoff for a special rapid response episode to discuss what we know so far about the ceasefire between Israel and Iran, how oil markets reacted, and the status of American sanctions on Iran.

Richard Nephew is a senior research scholar at CGEP. He formerly served as the US deputy special envoy for Iran under the Biden administration where he played a key role in negotiations over the Iran nuclear deal.

Karen Young is a senior research scholar at CGEP and a senior fellow at the Middle East Institute, where she focuses on the political economy of the Gulf states and energy policy.

Daniel Sternoff is a non-resident fellow at CGEP. He is also the head of Energy Aspects’ Executive Briefing Service. 

Richard, Karen and Daniel joined Jason on the afternoon of June 25 to discuss the current state of Iran’s nuclear program, the broader geopolitical and economic implications of this unfolding crisis, and where it all goes from here. 

Credits: Hosted by Jason Bordoff and Bill Loveless. Produced by Mary Catherine O’Connor, Caroline Pitman, and Kyu Lee. Engineering by Gregory Vilfranc.