The Global Energy Transition Podcast

The international response to Russia’s brutal February 2022 invasion of Ukraine has altered and transformed the energy transition, in some ways accelerating the move towards wind and solar generation but also forcing countries dependent on Russian fossil fuels, particularly European nations and the European Union as a whole, to search for and secure alternative supplies.

The sudden shocks of this new reality largely acerbated the already growing triple crisis of climate, energy and inflation that we continue to face. For decades renewable energy proponents have advocated for the transformation of aging or abandoned coal mines and coal power plants into...

In response to Russia’s invasion and brutal war of aggression against Ukraine in 2022, many European nations, particularly Germany, have banned Russian fossil fuels imports. For Germany this has meant not only finding new sources of liquified natural gas (LNG), but also spurred the government to establish several new LNG terminals. However, LNG, which is mainly cooled and compressed methane, represents a major source of climate-harming emissions. Germany, which had no LNG ports prior to Russia’s invasion, has now embarked on a very controversial port and terminal-construction binge, citing the need to maintain energy security. As demand for LNG rises,...

Representing a district near several of Germany’s largest coal mines and lignite-burning power plants, Kathrin Henneberger entered the Bundestag, Germany’s Federal Parliament, on a mandate from Green voters to accelerate the clean energy transition both at home and abroad. 

Long involved in the campaign to curtail global coal and fossil fuel production as well as human rights, during the summer of 2022, Henneberger traveled to Colombia, visited with front line coal, oil and gas communities and began forging a new intergovernmental climate alliance. 

But with her own country struggling to phase out coal, her constituents living near the edges of...

Aftershocks from Russia’s war against Ukraine continue rippling around the world, including to the deserts and jungles of Colombia. Producing increasing volumes of oil and fossil gas, this Andean country is also one of the world’s largest coal exporters. 

Long rocked by violence, civil war as well as government and industry-linked terrorism, prior to Russia’s invasion European buyers had been curtailing fossil fuel and “blood coal” imports from Colombia due linkages with human rights violations. But faced with its own energy crisis, following a personal call in April from German chancellor Olaf Scholz to Colombia’s then President Ivan Duque, more...