A Decade
of Energy and Climate Policy Impact

Listen to Jason talk about CGEP’s launch and journey on the Columbia Energy Exchange.

Today our team of nearly 100 scholars and staff, working in partnership with hundreds more faculty across Columbia University, provides policy makers, business and nonprofit leaders, and journalists with independent insights, grounded in rigorous research, in the time frames and formats that decision makers need and that are commensurate with the rapidly changing energy landscape. We do so at the intersection of climate, economics, and national security, on the understanding that the challenges facing the global energy system—and solutions to them—cannot be understood in isolation. Housed at a great university, we also take very seriously our mission to educate students, with nearly 100 currently working at CGEP or participating in our leadership programs.

As a born and raised New Yorker, I knew there was no better home for CGEP to bring together policy, finance, and civil society—and do so with a truly international perspective in this most global of cities. Columbia University has proven to be the perfect New York home, as a deeply respected research and teaching institution committed to real-world engagement and impact with global reach and perspective. And CGEP’s position within Columbia, as part of one of the world’s top public policy and international affairs schools, has allowed us to benefit from an unrivaled community of researchers and students and bring together energy’s multiple dimensions—geopolitical, economic, and environmental—in our work.

The stakes in making good energy policy decisions have never been higher—for security, the economy, and our planet. Yet the dialogue about our complex challenges remains riven by polarization, hyperbole, misinformation, rhetoric, and demonization. As such, the opportunities for CGEP in the years ahead are exceeded only by the need for our research, convening, and education.

As CGEP enters its second decade, I am more excited than ever about what lies ahead. In the years to come, we will deepen our expertise across the many branches of energy policy. We will expand our policy engagement with key decision makers. And we will further our work educating the next generation of energy and climate leaders. CGEP’s strength has always been the people who make its work possible, and it is this community that will allow us to address the most pressing energy and climate challenges in the years to come.

In a very short time, CGEP has collected an array of experts both distinguished in their accomplishments and earnest in their desire to understand the ways that science and geopolitics shape our world. Their contributions to research and policy debates make for a more informed public sphere, and give me hope for a better, more stable future.

Just as important, CGEP strives to make its expert analysis available in time to impact the issues, challenges, and crises that face the world today. The Center’s commitment to timely, impactful scholarship is part of what attracted many of us to CGEP—and its excellence is what earns the trust of leaders around the world.

You can see shifts in thinking as American oil and gas abundance affects geopolitics, as the cost of renewables and batteries accelerate their deployment, as diplomacy and science come together in renewed and strengthened resolve to reduce emissions, and as public and private sectors join in the search for robust sources of low- and zero-carbon energy.

Through it all, CGEP’s contributions to the public sphere looked over the horizon to unpack the implications of technologies, trends, and geopolitical turning points. Touching topics that range from the likelihood of nuclear proliferation to the public health impacts of air pollution and climate change, the consequences of coal’s decline to the road ahead for electric vehicles, and the potential implications of the war in Ukraine on the future of energy, we brought information and insight to the debates of the day.

We not only watched history in the making, we shaped it. In that, I will always take pride.

With governments having one eye on the climate crisis and another on energy and economic security, the competition for clean energy supply chains will generate deep, potentially disruptive implications in the interrelated areas of geopolitics, energy transition, trade, and environmental justice. To predict what happens next, one must not look at just one slice of these interlocking challenges, but adopt an interdisciplinary, global perspective on the energy transition that looks beyond headline noise to consider unexpected consequences and challenges.

Tackling global challenges calls for cross-cutting leadership, dialogue, and research. Government leaders, business leaders, and scholars need a forum not only to share perspectives, but even more importantly develop informed plans of action. I came to CGEP precisely because it has the global stature and breadth of vision needed to convene leaders from fields too often considered distinct, through our own network, SIPA, the broader university, and our global network of partners and alumni. Here at CGEP, we have the global reach and breadth of research needed to bring together powerful players and powerful ideas for high-impact outcomes in the energy transition and energy security agenda.

This unique experience of learning in a classroom and using that knowledge in research right away, or delving into a topic that really excites me, was possible thanks to CGEP. The Center often complemented what I learned in class, and more often was the main source of my learning. It provided us with opportunities to talk to and interact with world-leading experts on wide-ranging energy topics through research assistantships, student roundtables, and seminars. The research CGEP does and my work with scholars at CGEP helped me understand the role I want to play in this time of energy and climate crises. I am grateful every day for how much love and knowledge for energy there is at this Center, and I hope CGEP continues to be the bedrock of the next energy leaders studying at Columbia, for more decades to come.

I was proud to bring CGEP the experience earned over decades pioneering clean air policies in California, and convey what I’ve learned about tackling what the academics call ‘wicked problems’ in the real world.

I think I’m not alone among Visiting Fellows in finding that this program refreshed my commitment to the global fight against climate change. Every time I engage with the next generation of international public servants, environmental lawyers, and creative problem-solvers, it renews my hope for a better future.