Energy Evolution

Europe's increasingly digital power system faces a rapidly evolving mix of cyberattacks, physical sabotage and supply-chain vulnerabilities, with artificial intelligence amplifying both the risks and the defenses.

Host Camilla Naschert speaks with Eurelectric CEO Kristian Ruby and European Initiative for Energy Security Executive Director Albéric Mongrenier about how utilities are responding to AI-enabled threats, state-backed and non-state actors, and attacks on critical infrastructure.

They examine whether Europe's regulatory framework and security investment are keeping pace, how operators should approach equipment and vendor risk, and why stronger civilian-military coordination will be essential to keep the lights on.

The US offshore wind sector is facing a new front in its battle with the Trump administration: lease buyouts. In this episode of Energy Evolution, renewables reporter Noah Schwartz tells host Camilla Naschert about federal deals that allow offshore wind developers to cancel leases in exchange for fossil fuel investment commitments and government reimbursement.

S&P Global Energy offshore wind analyst John Murray explains the financial and regulatory pressures facing developers, while former Bureau of Ocean Energy Management head Liz Klein discusses the legal challenges, state-level opposition and national security arguments surrounding offshore wind.

Dozens of North American private startups and established companies, state agencies and academic institutions are racing to develop and commercialize an advanced nuclear reactor. Whether these companies, and the advanced nuclear sector at large, can succeed depends on numerous factors, including the capital plans of large tech companies, favorable federal policy and the strengths of individual reactor designs.

So which companies are currently winning the race to commercialize an advanced reactor design?

In this episode, Dan Testa discusses the state of the advanced nuclear sector with contributor and S&P Global Energy reporter Abbie Bennett. Bennett also interviews Craig Bealmear, CFO of advanced reactor developer Oklo Inc., to get an inside view of the industry.

Diesel markets are entering their most stressful stretch of the year as record prices, thin inventories and disrupted supply flows collide across the Americas. In this episode of the Oil Markets Podcast, Jeff Mower speaks with Janet McGurty, Kauanna Navarro and Carlos Castillo about how constraints in Russia and the Middle East have pushed US Gulf Coast refiners into the role of global swing supplier, why Brazil is relying more heavily on US and Indian cargoes, and how limited refinery spare capacity leaves markets with little room for error.

By most conventional metrics, the European refining sector is in rude health. The Middle East conflict has driven key fuel price benchmarks to unprecedented heights, and refiners are running flat out to plug supply gaps left by disruptions to key Gulf exporters. In this episode, host Eklavya Gupte speaks to Kelly Norways, senior editor at S&P Global Energy Platts, who explains why the current boom has so far failed to shift many refiners' thinking about the long-term competitiveness of Europe as a fuel production hub, and why that disconnect threatens both the region's energy security and its ambitions for investment in low-carbon technologies. They explore how governments across the continent are responding to a wave of refinery closures that predates the conflict, whether the crisis has genuinely changed the political calculus in the region, and what it would actually take to unlock the scale of capital spending the sector needs to survive and decarbonize. We also hear from Elizabeth de Jong, CEO of Fuels Industry UK, a trade association representing the country's downstream sector. She sets out the industry's case to be included in the UK's Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism, explains why record refining margins represent a temporary distortion rather than a structural fix, and warns that without a decisive government signal on carbon costs and competitiveness, Europe risks emerging from this crisis in a weaker position than when it began.

Alongside a surge in data center construction, a growing protest movement has emerged in the US, with locals voicing concerns over electricity and water usage. Protests have put around 12 gigawatts of data center capacity at risk, analyst John Murray from S&P Global Energy tells the Energy Evolution podcast. To address concerns, tech firms need to improve transparency and deliver clear local benefits, said Darrell West, senior fellow in the Center for Technology Innovation within the Governance Studies program at think tank Brookings.

To answer questions on sustainability and power consumption, host Camilla Naschert is joined by Aaron Tinjum of trade association Data Center Coalition.

The news clip featured in this episode is from ABC News, July 19, 2026.

The EU wants to nearly double its electrification rate to 46% by 2040, a transformation that would slash fossil fuel imports by hundreds of billions of euros annually. In this episode of Energy Evolution, host Eklavya Gupte examines the EU's Electrification Action Plan and assesses whether Europe can realistically achieve it.

Coralie Laurencin, director of European gas, power and carbon policy at S&P Global Energy CERA, and Andreas Franke, editorial lead on European power markets at S&P Global Energy Platts, unpack the formidable challenges: stubbornly high electricity costs, taxation and subsidy structures, and massive grid investments needed to support surging demand.

The conversation breaks down which sectors will electrify fastest and which face steeper obstacles, from Germany's industrial power subsidies to France's nuclear-backed power contracts. As geopolitical instability threatens global supply chains, electrification has emerged as the EU's answer to energy security, climate ambition, and industrial competitiveness, but only if Brussels can make electricity both abundant and affordable.

Balcony or "plug-in" solar is rapidly gaining popularity, as it gives consumers who might not have easy access to distributed solar generation a straightforward way to deploy the technology and begin saving on their power bills. Meanwhile, as drivers transition to electric vehicles, the possibility of deploying the batteries as a flexible grid resource hooked up to bidirectional chargers is also growing.

These new technologies are allowing residential utility customers to take greater control over their electricity consumption and spending. But wider adoption has implications for grid safety and reliability, and several states are already moving to regulate and manage the addition of these resources.

In this episode, Dan Testa discusses these issues with Kirsten Errick, an S&P Global Energy reporter who covers renewables. Kirsten interviews Cora Stryker, co-founder of Bright Saver, a plug-in solar company, and Aseem Kapur, chief revenue officer at GM Energy.

In April 2026, the European Commission adopted interim guidance stipulating that solar and battery storage projects using inverters or power conversion systems sourced from high-risk countries would be ineligible for EU funding, citing concerns over cybersecurity and grid resilience. Among the affected countries is China, Europe's dominant supplier of clean energy technologies.

In this episode of Energy Evolution, host Eklavya Gupte is joined by Lena Dias Martins, electricity pricing reporter at S&P Global Energy Platts, to explore the implications of this policy for Europe's rapidly expanding solar and battery storage sectors.

They examine how markets have responded, which regions may be most affected, and whether viable alternatives to China-made inverters are available at scale.

The episode features Cormac Gilligan, director of clean technologies and supply chains at S&P Global Energy Horizons, who explains how the restrictions could signal the start of a broader global shift toward greater diversification of clean energy supply chains.

We also hear from Jan Krčmář, executive director of the Czech Solar Association, who shares the industry perspective on the practical challenges facing developers and installers, how the sector is responding to the new requirements, and what the changes could mean for solar deployment across Europe in the years ahead.

On July 14, grid operator PJM released the results of its latest capacity market auction for the 2028-2029 delivery year. Prices hit the federally approved cap of $325/megawatt-day, but the amount of procured capacity came up short of PJM's reliability requirement by 6.8 gigawatts.

In other words, prices went as high as they were allowed to go but still didn't incentivize enough generation to meet the reliability requirement PJM wanted. Although PJM has other options to secure that capacity, the results of this latest auction underscore mounting concerns about rising prices and reliability in the region managed by the grid operator, which provides electricity for 67 million people across 13 states. And power demand from data centers is contributing to these issues.

Joining Dan Testa on this episode to talk through some of these issues is Darren Sweeney, a senior reporter at S&P Global Energy. Sweeney interviews Paul Segal, CEO of LS Power, a private independent power producer with a major presence in PJM, and Tanya Peevey, an S&P Global Energy CERA analyst for North American power and renewables.