Trump’s Most Difficult Deal Yet
The U.S. president wants to end the war in Ukraine. Does Russia?
For the latest updates on access to the Morningside campus, visit the Public Safety website. Read more.
This is the fourth episode of a five-part series exploring the European energy crisis in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. If you haven’t listened to the first three episodes, we recommend you start there.
After the Russian invasion of Ukraine, many Germans and Poles installed heat pumps and residential solar panels to reduce their dependence on Russian fossil fuels.
But do the countries have the skilled workforce they need to meet rapidly growing demand?
In this episode, we examine the role of these technologies in building the net-zero economy—and how supply chain problems and a shortage of trade workers has hindered the mobilization of clean technologies.
Then, we look at the efforts to solve these bottlenecks with campaigns to recruit a new wave of electricians, engineers, and other craftspeople.
So far over this season we've traced the global lithium-ion battery supply chain from mining to processing to manufacturing. And we've put it all into a geopolitical and economic context.
China has been the world's biggest battery manufacturer for over a decade. By 2022, according to the IEA, China manufactured 76% of the world's batteries. But that's changing.
Batteries can replace gasoline in our cars, or diesel in our generators with electricity. But batteries and petroleum-based fuels share something in common: they both rely on energy-intensive processes to turn extracted materials into something useful.
To produce enough batteries to reach global net-zero goals, the International Energy Agency says we'll need to increase production of critical minerals by six fold by 2040. It's a monumental task.
President Donald Trump has made energy a clear focus for his second term in the White House. Having campaigned on an “America First” platform that highlighted domestic fossil-fuel growth, the reversal of climate policies and clean energy incentives advanced by the Biden administration, and substantial tariffs on key US trading partners, he declared an “energy emergency” on his first day in office.
November’s election for president of the United States will have crucial implications for the nation’s and world’s energy and climate policies.
Nuclear power is being weighed in energy transition plans around the world, as countries seek to replace fossil fuels with low-carbon alternatives while also meeting growing energy demand and maintaining reliability and affordability.
Millions of US households struggle to meet their energy needs due to low wages, rising living costs, and other historical and structural drivers of poverty.