‘Toothless’ sanctions
Why the world’s largest waste management company made a $3 billion bet on the US.
Current Access Level “I” – ID Only: CUID holders, alumni, and approved guests only
Last week, a cyberattack on the Colonial Pipeline system forced the shutdown of one of the nation’s most critical pieces of energy infrastructure, spurring price spikes and panicked buying to fill up tanks. While the pipeline is back up and running, the lasting significance of the Colonial outage–the largest attack on the US energy system in history–should not be overlooked.
In this edition of Columbia Energy Exchange, host Jason Bordoff is joined by Bob McNally and Adam Segal, leading experts on energy and cybersecurity, respectively, to examine what happened with the Colonial Pipeline system and what lessons should be drawn about the vulnerability and resilience of critical energy infrastructure.
Bob McNally is a Non-Resident Fellow at the Center on Global Energy Policy, and the founder and President of the Rapidan Energy Group. From 2001 to 2003, Bob served as the top international and domestic energy adviser on the White House staff. He is the author of the book Crude Volatility, published through the Center on Global Energy Policy book series.
Adam Segal is the Ira A. Lipman chair in emerging technologies and national security, and director of the Digital and Cyberspace Policy program at the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR). He is the author of the book The Hacked World Order: How Nations Fight, Trade, Maneuver, and Manipulate in the Digital Age. Before coming to CFR, Adam was an arms control analyst for the China Project at the Union of Concerned Scientists. He has been a visiting scholar at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Center for International Studies, the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences, and Tsinghua University in Beijing.
The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) regulates the United States’ energy transmission, pipeline networks, and wholesale rates for electricity. For much of its history, FERC was a little-known...
Around the globe, and here in the United States, energy markets face huge uncertainties. They include everything from rising geopolitical tensions to a wave of new liquefied natural...
Elected officials face huge challenges when it comes to energy policymaking. They have very little time to learn complicated, nuanced issues. They're bombarded by information — some of...
The ten years since the Paris Agreement was signed at the UN Climate Change Conference, COP 21, have been the ten hottest years on record. And the outcome...
Last month, the Trump administration imposed fresh sanctions on Russia’s two largest oil companies, Rosneft and Lukoil, signaling a renewed desire to drive Moscow to the negotiating table in its war against Ukraine. But although these measures have the potential to harm the Russian economy, just how much damage they inflict will depend largely on one actor: Beijing. China bought almost half the oil Russia exported in 2024, evading Washington’s existing restrictions in the process. And new sanctions alone will do little to push China into significantly reducing its purchases.
Connecticut needs an honest debate, and fresh thinking, to shape a climate strategy fit for today, not 2022.
President Donald Trump’s impulsive, go-it-alone approach is uniquely ill-suited to the long-term and cross-cutting nature of the challenge that China poses.