Albertan elections this spring brought in a new provincial government promising to revitalize the province’s oil and gas sector. This week on Energy 360°, Laura Dawson (Wilson Center) and Chris Sands (SAIS) join Andrew Stanley (CSIS Energy Program) to unpack the implications of this election. Together, they explain the dynamics behind Alberta’s elections, what we could expect in the lead up to country-wide elections this fall, and what it might mean for Canadian energy policy and for U.S.-Canada energy relations.   Laura Dawson is the director of the Canada Institute at the Wilson Center, and Chris Sands is director of the Center for Canadian Studies at the School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) at Johns Hopkins University and a non-resident senior associate with the CSIS Americas Program.     Note:  This episode was recorded prior to Prime Minister Trudeau’s approval of the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion project.  See Andrew’s work on U.S.-Canada Energy Trade Read Laura’s recent Op-Ed: Trudeau figures out how to get things done in Washington Read Chris’s latest CSIS Commentary: Will Foreign Policy Prove Decisive in Canada’s 2019 Election?

Nikos Tsafos (CSIS) chats with Mark Thurber (Associate Director, Program on Energy and Sustainable Development (PESD) Stanford) about his new book, Coal.  Mark and Nikos delve into the geopolitics and economics of continued coal use in energy versus the needs and concerns at the local, national, and global levels.   Click here for more on his new book, Coal.

Join Gina McCarthy (Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and Center for Climate, Health, and the Global Environment) and Sarah Ladislaw (CSIS Energy Program) as they discuss the need for breakthrough innovations to create more efficient residential air cooling systems. The two also discuss the importance of emphasizing the public health benefits of addressing climate change and how best to direct the immense energy younger generations have for addressing climate change and issues of inequality. Click to watch Gina McCarthy’s recent keynote address at CSIS.

This week, 3 CSIS experts discuss the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), China’s global strategy to be at the center of global economics through infrastructure, trade, and energy projects.  In the years since BRI was launched, definitions and expectations for BRI projects and financing have changed. In April, over 3 dozen countries met in China for the second Belt and Road summit, which was posed answer some of the new project concerns which have arisen, including local impacts, environmental concerns, debt, and lack of transparency.   Jon Hillman (CSIS Reconnecting Asia Project) joins Jane Nakano and Nikos Tsafos (CSIS Energy and National Security Program) to look at the importance of energy projects in the BRI, changing expectations from BRI partners, and what defines a successful BRI project for China.

Trevor Houser (Partner, Rhodium Group) talks with Sarah Ladislaw (CSIS) about modeling the physical risks and impacts of climate change at the Climate Impact Lab.  The Climate Impact Lab’s models are providing companies with better tools to see these potential impacts and risks in their portfolios, allowing them to begin taking precautionary steps to increase resilience.

Titans of the Climate , the new book by Kelly Sims Gallagher (The Fletcher School, Tufts University) and Xiaowei Xuan (Development Research Center, the State Council), sheds light on how the United States and China implement their climate and environmental policies. The authors join Jane Nakano (CSIS) to discuss differences in each’s policy process and regulatory structures as well as to explain how the two countries could find common ground again to advance climate solutions. To learn more about the book, visit Titans of the Climate: Explaining Policy Process in the United States and China.

Frank Verrastro (CSIS Energy Program) and Haim Malka (Deputy Director and Senior Fellow, CSIS Middle East Program) discuss the current political developments in Algeria. Their discussion includes the challenges of creating a legitimate transitionary process, ongoing protests, and uncertainty for energy production and oil markets.

Luiza Demôro, associate and project lead author with BloombergNEF, and Chris Head, private sector specialist with Climate Investment Funds, join Nikos Tsafos, senior fellow with the CSIS Energy and National Security Program, to discuss the potential for concessional financing to accelerate the clean energy transition in emerging markets. For more, read: The Clean Technology Fund and Concessional Finance

Isabel Mogstad (Manager, EDF+Business Energy at Environmental Defense Fund), Geoff Walker (Co-founder and Managing Director at Water Street Partners), and Nikos Tsafos (Senior Fellow with the CSIS Energy & National Security Program) discuss how oil and gas companies are moving to reduce methane emissions from their operations worldwide.  Listen in as Isabel, Geoff, and Nikos converse about the unique challenges faced by companies in this partner-intensive industry, where decision making is spread across multiple actors and addressing methane leakage will require a high level of cooperation.  Isabel and Geoff also highlight the key factors necessary for addressing this issue within the next three to five years.    For more, see EDF’s recent report:  The Next Frontier: Managing Methane Risk from Non-Operated Assets

This week, Spencer Dale (Group Chief Economist, BP) and Sarah Ladislaw (SVP and Director, Energy and National Security Program, CSIS) discuss BP’s 2019 Energy Outlook, specifically diving into one of the Outlook scenarios which focused on less globalization and its potential implications for energy systems out to 2040.