All Things Sustainable

CERAWeek sneak peek: What's ahead for energy and sustainability

34 min
Feb 27, 2026about 2 months ago
Listen to Episode
Summary

Dan Yergin, chair of CERAWeek 2026, discusses the convergence of energy and technology sectors driven by AI's massive electricity demands. The episode explores how geopolitical fragmentation is reshaping global energy priorities, with sustainability goals competing against immediate needs for energy security and affordability.

Insights
  • Energy transition is becoming energy addition, with renewable growth accompanied by continued conventional energy expansion
  • AI is driving unprecedented electricity demand growth, forcing convergence between historically separate energy and tech industries
  • Geopolitical fragmentation is ending three decades of globalization, creating supply chain vulnerabilities for critical minerals
  • Copper scarcity represents a major bottleneck for electrification, with mining timelines averaging 17-29 years globally
  • Nuclear power is experiencing a renaissance driven by tech companies' need for 24/7 zero-carbon baseload electricity
Trends
Energy-tech sector convergence driven by AI electricity demandsShift from fuel-intensive to mineral-intensive energy economyNuclear power renaissance with focus on small modular reactorsGeopolitical weaponization of critical mineral supply chainsGrowing backlash against climate policies in developed nationsEnergy security returning as priority alongside sustainabilityPragmatism replacing idealism in sustainability approachesDeveloping nations prioritizing economic growth over climate goalsPermitting reform becoming critical infrastructure bottleneckCorporate sustainability communication becoming geographically fragmented
Companies
S&P Global
Hosts CERAWeek conference and employs both podcast hosts and Dan Yergin as vice chairman
Google
Major tech company investing heavily in AI infrastructure requiring massive electricity consumption
Amazon Web Services
Cloud hyperscaler transitioning from displaying services to being major electricity consumer
Microsoft
Tech giant among companies driving nuclear power renaissance through electricity demands
BlackRock
CEO Larry Fink spoke at previous CERAWeek as major financial industry voice
Ford
CEO will speak at CERAWeek 2026 about struggles defining consumer-desired vehicles
People
Dan Yergin
Pulitzer Prize-winning author, S&P Global Vice Chairman, and CERAWeek conference chair
Lindsey Hall
All Things Sustainable podcast host conducting the interview
Esther Wheeldon
Co-host of All Things Sustainable podcast
Carlos Pasquale
S&P Global executive who co-authored copper study and discussed mining at COP30
Larry Fink
BlackRock CEO who spoke at previous CERAWeek conference
Angela Merkel
Former German Chancellor criticized for shutting down nuclear industry after Fukushima
Thomas Edison
Historical figure referenced for laying first copper cables for Manhattan electrification
Quotes
"AI has been described as manufacturing electricity into intelligence. So you need electricity."
Dan Yergin
"Hungry stomachs won't wait."
President of Indonesia
"We are committed to working on climate, but we have different priorities because we also have to worry about economic growth, reducing poverty, improving health."
Prime Minister of Malaysia
"Energy transition so far looks also to be a world of energy addition."
Dan Yergin
"It takes on average 17 years to bring a new mine into operation in the world, 29 years in the United States."
Dan Yergin
Full Transcript
4 Speakers
Speaker A

Lindsey Hall I'm Lindsey Hall.

0
Speaker B

And I'm Esther Wheeldon.

0:03

Speaker A

Welcome to All Things Sustainable, a podcast from SP Global. As your hosts, we'll dive into all the sustainability topics that are reshaping the business world.

0:05

Speaker B

Join us every Friday for in depth analysis and interviews with leaders from around the globe. Together, we'll break down big sustainability headlines and cut through the jargon.

0:15

Speaker A

Earlier this year, we published s and P Global's 10 sustainability trends to Watch and it won't surprise our regular listeners to hear that one topic high on that list is Energy in 2026. We're looking at energy and sustainability as inseparable priorities that are shaping an increasingly fragmented world. To understand what that looks like in practice, we're taking the show on the road. In just a few weeks, I'll be traveling to Houston, Texas to cover one of the world's largest energy conferences. That's the annual saraweek gathering hosted by S and P Global.

0:33

Speaker B

For some context, the Financial Times has described this week long conference as the Davos of energy, and Politico has called it the super bowl of the energy industry. The event convenes stakeholders from across sectors to discuss solutions to the biggest challenges facing the future of energy and to

1:03

Speaker A

learn what's ahead for this event and the energy world more broadly. I sat down with Dan Jurgen. Dan is a Pulitzer Prize winner, S and P Global Vice Chairman and chair of Saraweek. As you'll hear from Dan in 2026, the title of Saraweek is Convergence and Energy Technology and Geopolitics, and the conference will focus on many of the key topics we're watching through a sustainability lens this year, including AI, supply chains, regulation, investment, climate, and all different forms of energy. At Sarah Week in 2025, I heard many energy executives calling for an all of the above approach that uses all available energy sources to meet the world's growing energy needs. That included oil and gas, renewables like wind and solar, and nuclear, which will be again in focus in 2026. I'll be moderating a dinner the first night of SARAH Week about sustainability and pragmatism, and our regular podcast listeners will know that pragmatism is one of those buzzwords we've been hearing in the sustainability space over the past year. I'll also be interviewing conference speakers from around the world and across sectors for this podcast. Okay, let's dive into my conversation with Dan.

1:19

Speaker C

Dan, thank you so much for sitting down with me for another interview for

2:25

Speaker A

the All Things Sustainable podcast.

2:29

Speaker C

This is our first time getting to sit down in person so I'm very excited about that.

2:30

Speaker D

Well, thank you, Lindsay. I'm very glad. I know how impactful this podcast is and so I'm very glad to join you again and this time in person.

2:34

Speaker C

For any of our listeners who didn't get a chance to hear you on previous episodes, when you've come on, can

2:41

Speaker A

you just do a quick introduction?

2:46

Speaker C

What should they know about you?

2:48

Speaker D

Well, my job is I'm vice chairman of S and P Global, which is of course the ultimate host of this podcast. Written a number of books around energy and climate, including the Prize, which of course was a Pulitzer Prize winner. The Quest, which has a 150 page section explaining how climate went from a consideration of a few scientists in the middle of the 19th century in Switzerland who were worried that another ice age would come to what the climate consideration is today. Because I just asked the question how did this all happen? And so I ended up writing it's almost like a book within the book. And then most recently the new map, Energy, Climate and the Clash of Nations, which is kind of where we're living right now.

2:49

Speaker C

For anyone who hasn't had an opportunity to go to Sarah Week, what should people know about this?

3:30

Speaker D

I think saraweek is the leading the thought leadership energy conference of the world. I mean it start when we first did it our first year we had 180 people. We thought it was huge. This year we'll have about 10,000 people, but it doesn't feel like 10,000 people. But it's very content driven. We spend an enormous time focusing on the program and delivering. So people come away, they're feeling, they've really learned a lot and they have an idea of what's coming down the road, how things are changing, new perspectives they didn't have. And so every year for me, like so many other people, you learn so much from it. And the theme this year we spent a lot of time discussing arguing what the theme should be. This year it's convergence and competition because convergence is we see energy industry coming together with AI and the tech industry, which is something that hadn't happened before because really there were two distinct worlds. But competition including of critical importance in affecting sustainability and energy choices is the what we're seeing is the fragmentation, the end of the kind of globalization that we've known for the last three and a half decades.

3:35

Speaker C

And so how is that lack of globalization or move away from multilateralism going to impact some of the sessions that we're going to be hearing?

4:48

Speaker D

Well, we'll be talking about the geopolitics but that affects the energy trade. I mean, it affects the cost of solar panels. We see the US Government now very concerned about dependence on China for technology, including the batteries that are key for making wind and solar into flexible energy. So it permeates the whole discussion. And of course Middle east, what recently happened in Venezuela. So all of those themes run together, but also we have a huge focus on technology. We have what's called the innovation Agora. And last year we had like 250 startups and they tend to be companies either working on sustainability, climate, it, AI, all of those things are there. And so that's a very vibrant part of the conference.

4:55

Speaker C

I've been to the conference the last two years. This will be my third year. And for anyone who hasn't been, it's very eye opening to be in this space with some of the world's largest oil and gas company CEOs, the U.S. department of Energy Secretary, and then also hearing from big names. Like last year there was Larry Fink, BlackRock's CEO. I mean, these are some of the big names that are shaping the business world and not just energy conversations.

5:45

Speaker D

We'll have the CEO of Ford this year who will talk about their struggles to define what are the cars that consumers want. And also companies struggling to adjust to changes in policy, which in some cases are 180 degree change in policy. We'll hear a lot more about nuclear. So yeah, so it's the big names. But at the same time, there's a lot to learn about innovation, where things are going, because you really, as you go in the innovation accord, you just see it unfolding in front of your eyes.

6:12

Speaker C

How are you expecting 2026 to differ from 2025? The world has changed a lot.

6:45

Speaker D

Yeah, well, I think last year when we met, it was just at the cusp of the change from one administration to another. Now, of course, the changes are so vivid to everybody and the messages are so different to everybody, but we will have energy ministers and government officials from 30 or 40 countries there. So there'll be a lot of different perspectives. We'll certainly hear from the Europeans about their focus on climate policy and their continued conviction on it. Comparing to the change of direction, obviously in the United States, there's a lot of Canadians there. We'll have more people than ever before from Africa and from the developing world. So we'll get a lot of different perspectives.

6:50

Speaker C

That's quite valuable and something we really aim for on this podcast, hearing from all different sectors and all different parts of the world. And I found it so interesting that when you talk to, say, someone in Australia or Southeast Asia, the lens they're applying to climate as a financial risk, for example, has not changed. And I've had people on this podcast saying they are, in fact, doubling down on sustainability and on climate.

7:29

Speaker D

Yeah, we do this conference called Energy Asia, and it was very striking for me, the Prime Minister of Malaysia saying, we are committed to working on climate, but we have different priorities because we also have to worry about economic growth, reducing poverty, improving health, and we're not going to be told what to do by people in northwest Europe. And two nights ago, I was at a dinner with the President of Indonesia, and he said, hungry stomachs won't wait. I think over the last two or three years, there is a kind of. I see a kind of rethinking of energy transition. I mean, Last year, over 90% of the new capacity that was put in the world was window solar. So the direction is clear, but the timing and the prioritization is different. And I think it's particularly challenging right now for Europe, which has its very strong commitment to sustainability, to climate change. But suddenly it has two other things it didn't really have to worry about two or three years ago. One is its loss of competitiveness and deindustrialization, which is a real problem. And they have to move to spend 5% of GDP on defense. And so I think I can see Europe struggling to rebalance. And I think we also see the rise of those populist parties in Europe with different agendas around this. But I was struck by one of the energy ministers from one of the major European countries said, we just need a reality check, just need to see the balance. Because the other thing that happened during COVID people didn't worry about energy security, they worried about health. But energy prices went down, demand went down. But then on February 24, 2022, Russia invades Ukraine, and suddenly energy security is back on the agenda. So governments who were just focused in one direction now have more priorities that they're struggling with at the same time. And I think that's the period we are now in this kind of rebalancing of priorities. And as we talk about it, I think listening at Sarah Week, that will be one of the things that we'll really get out of it, is to see how are people arranging their priorities when the agenda is more complex and their kind of conflicting demands.

7:54

Speaker C

And the timelines are different too.

10:08

Speaker A

Right.

10:09

Speaker C

When you talk about some of these sustainability priorities like climate change, that can seem Distant. Whereas if you're talking about can you afford.

10:10

Speaker D

Yeah, affordability. I mean, that's a big issue in England, that's a big issue in Europe. It's going to be a big issue in the US elections in 2026. Affordability is on the agenda and there are different points of view on that. So that's a very imminent thing. The priorities are there, but getting the balance is with more stresses and the stresses on the public finance of governments. When you look at the US heading to 140% of debt as a percent of GDP, governments don't have necessarily the same fiscal room for maneuver that they might have had in the past.

10:18

Speaker C

So you talked a little bit about some of the recent conversations that you've been having, like two nights ago with the president of Indonesia.

10:54

Speaker D

By the way, he said he's read the prize three times.

11:02

Speaker C

Three times. Well, that's quite an honor, I would think, as an author.

11:04

Speaker D

Yeah, he's a big booster of the book. But then I did this book called Commanding Heights about the relationship between governments and markets and how that always changes. And he actually said to me the other night how important that's been for him in terms of policy. So it's funny, you write books. It's a kind of isolated experience and you're on your own and then you see the impact it has in the world and it's like a child that's just grown up and has its own. Its own life.

11:09

Speaker C

The only experience I've had that's maybe a little akin to that is with this podcast. Sometimes. Yeah, you just put it out there and you're like, has anyone listening? And sometimes at a conference, someone will come up and be like, I really learned something.

11:37

Speaker D

And the impact it has. And you don't know the impact. I think that is a very fair analogy. You cast it out in the world and you find out what it means to people.

11:48

Speaker C

What else have you been hearing at the start of 2026 that's going to influence some of the conversations you're having on stage at Sarah Week?

11:57

Speaker D

I think that it is this convergence between the energy industries and the tech industries. There were two different animals, two different cultures with very different time frames, very different in terms of capital investment. An engineer in the software industry might be something that I don't know. It's a couple of months to develop an engineer in the energy business. It's seven years to develop a project. And now they've come together because the recognition a much higher priority in electricity. For 25 years, electricity demand in the US has been essentially flat and it's growing. And a couple of years ago I did a session with the CEO of one of the big utilities and she was saying, we're trying to cope with the fact that our growth is now 2 1/2, 3%. The other day I ran into a CEO of one of the other major utilities in the Southeast. I said, well, how's your demand growing? He said, 8%. And how do you meet that demand? And AI has been described as manufacturing electricity into intelligence. So you need electricity. So that's a real constraint. Energy security used to be about oil and gas. Now it's about electricity in a way that it wasn't before.

12:04

Speaker C

Is it new, this trend of having your Googles and your Amazon web services and your Microsoft's taking part in Sarawak.

13:13

Speaker D

They came in the past, but more to display their cloud services. Now they're there basically as consumers of electricity. And they were industries that they were light on capital investment. Now they're heavy on capital investment. The number that's been out there is there's going to be $650 billion invested in AI infrastructure data centers this year in the U.S. now I've heard the number 750 billion. This is unprecedented, the amount of capital investment that's going into this. So this is wholly new to have them there in that capacity. And that's where the convergence is. And there are industries with very different cultures and industries with very different time frames.

13:21

Speaker C

Are there any questions that you're heading into saraweek hoping to have answered when it relates to the way that you're describing that the energy and the tech industries are working together?

14:06

Speaker D

Well, I, I think the question is to see how this new relationship is working out and scale and the supply chains for it. Because the other day I was with some people from one of the big AI companies and they said they were going to Germany. I said, why? Well, they said there aren't enough electricians in the United States and we're looking for robotic electricians.

14:15

Speaker C

Wow.

14:37

Speaker A

Okay.

14:37

Speaker C

And another feature of this explosion in demand as, as you, you noted electrification, how the demand for copper has changed.

14:39

Speaker D

Yeah, I've been a little bit obsessed with copper. We started to studying it about four or five years ago. Really. It's partly when the International Energy Agency just said if you energy transition, you move from a fuel intensive energy economy to a mineral intensive. And now we have just finished this major study on copper. And if electricity is the kind of critical input into AI, copper is the critical input into electricity. It's been the metal of electrification ever since Thomas Edison laid 80,000ft of copper cables under the streets of New York in 1882 to electrify lower Manhattan. But what's happened now is that you have all these vectors of demand that you didn't have before. But then you look at it, we look at our databases, S and P has a very strong knowledge about mining and minerals. It takes on average 17 years to bring a new mine into operation in the world, 29 years in the United States. So these things don't happen quickly. And it's partly because of below ground issues and above ground issues. But when we looked at copper, we said we were used to familiar uses of copper on gesturing to the lights above or the machinery that's making noise out on the street. But now we have these new vectors of demand. We have energy transition demand, which I want to come back to and it's very important to your listeners. Then you have the demand for AI and data centers which is copper intensive. Then you have the increase in defense spending and you also have the electrification of the battlefield that we're seeing in Ukraine. And then you see maybe coming much more quickly than people think, humanoid robots. So you have all those demands coming together. And we actually don't see, unless there's some big changes how you're going to meet that. And that's going to be a constraint. So we'll have a big track at Cyril actually on minerals. 5 years ago we wouldn't have had. But minerals now are key part of the energy industry and they're key to sustainability. Our colleague Carlos pasquale at this COP30 in Brazil had discussions with the Brazilians about mining needs to be on the agenda of the cop because if you don't have mining, you can't deal with it. And just let me give you one example. An electric car uses 2.9 times more copper than a conventional car. Photovoltaics, solar PV is copper intensive. People don't think about that. So when we looked at the demand growth, we said, actually of all the vectors that are going to grow substantially, energy transition demand, as we call it, is actually the biggest growth. And so you got to put that together with your thinking about energy transition is that it is mineral intensive and it's copper intensive. And then this is where geopolitics comes in competition because who dominates the mining and in particular the processing of minerals? China and the Trump administration wanted to put restrictions on computer chips going to China. And China said, okay, we're going to put restrictions on the rare earths that you need in the United States. And I was at a conference with CEO of one of the automobile industry and they said we're going to have to shut down a week and a half. We don't have the supplies of rare earths. So all these mineral issues have now become very important. And this is where they're very tangled up in geopolitics. You can't separate them.

14:48

Speaker C

And then I would add to all of that mix the fact that when you are thinking about mining for these very critical minerals for the energy transition, you also want to be thinking about what's the impact on biodiversity, what are the social factors.

18:21

Speaker D

Absolutely. And it's thought that one reason that China has this domination of rare earths is because the mining of them, at least as it's done, has a lot of environmental issues. And there isn't the same focus on environmental protection around them as we would expect in other parts of the world and the west and so forth. There was a rare earth mining facility in the west that was shut down because it was thought that it affected the local wildlife. So that just moved to China. So there is a lot of environmental challenges to mining. And mining has to be done in a very environmentally proper way. And I think the major international mining companies, for them, if you look at it, sustainability is a very big issue for them, but it's not a big issue for everybody who's doing mining.

18:37

Speaker C

It's not a level playing field.

19:29

Speaker D

Exactly.

19:31

Speaker C

And you're describing just a very thorny problem when you start to get all these competing priorities and challenges.

19:32

Speaker D

Exactly. So that's the practicality of energy transition. That's the practicality of sustainability. You can have these goals, but how do you implement them and meet them? And I think that's the period that we're in. And I guess we'll just see people wrestling with that. How do you put it together and find solutions in the discussions at saraweek? Another thing that's come back out of this is nuclear.

19:38

Speaker C

Talk to me more about that.

20:02

Speaker D

Well, I would think five or six years ago, China was moving ahead, Russia moving ahead. They're the main vendors of nuclear technology. But we had Germany, you had Chancellor Merkel. It turns out one of her biggest mistakes is she shut down in a weekend. The German nuclear industry made that decision as a result of Fukushima, and that was about 25% of Germany's electricity. What happens as a result of that? Much higher dependence on Russian gas. So. But you would have thought in all these nuclear plants being closed down, that's now turned around. We now see that they're reopening nuclear plants that were shut in the US bringing them back and I don't know, 6, 7, $8 billion of venture capital money, not government money, has gone into fusion where fusion was always about a half century away. Now some people are saying 2000 and 30s, and this new focus on small nuclear reactors, so we'll hear that as well at zero week. And the big tech companies, the hyperscalers, they're among the people, I think more than anybody else who've really driven this kind of rebirth of nuclear. A, because of the need for baseload demand and B, they want zero carbon electricity. And if you want it on a very large scale on a 24 hour continuous basis, that gets you to nuclear. That's something that again, I would say four years ago was not on the agenda. Now there's a lot of excitement about small modular reactors. I think there's still a question of timing and looking at the economics of them as opposed to conventional plants, how quickly can you build them and so forth. But nuclear is not an overnight business. And I think just yesterday talking to a company that's big in the construction of it and it's, you know, you've lost a lot of talent over the years because you people haven't been going into nuclear engineering. But nuclear now seems to be back as part of both meeting electricity need and meeting sustainability goals.

20:04

Speaker C

A quick note, if you're like me

22:09

Speaker A

and have a lot to learn when it comes to nuclear, don't worry, we'll be talking to the CEO of a nuclear fusion company. In an upcoming episode of this podcast, Dan mentioned a recent copper study he published with Carlos Pasquale, who is senior vice president and head of geopolitics and International affairs at S and P Global Energy. And we'll include a link to that in our show notes. Dan also mentioned COP30 and that's the UN's annual climate change Conference of the Parties, which Brazil hosted in 2025. In 2026, COP31 will take place in Turkey. Now when I attended Saraweek in 2025, I wrote five key takeaways for sustainability sustainability professionals. I'll also include a link to that paper in our show notes. And one of those key takeaways was around deregulation and permitting reform. This was a hotly debated topic last year and Dan said it remains on the agenda in 2026.

22:11

Speaker D

Whether it's solar, whether it's wind, whether it's transmission, whether it's a natural Gas pipeline. Whether it's a mining permitting, it has to have an end. We would never have had the interstate highway system in the US if we had the permitting system we have now, we might not have been able to win World War II. So reform. It doesn't mean you don't have very rigorous environmental standards and analysis. But there has to be a way to kind of that people can get to a conclusion.

22:59

Speaker C

And it's how do you thread that needle?

23:28

Speaker A

Right.

23:30

Speaker D

Well, and again, that will be a topic of much discussion at CERAWeek. And what we're seeing is it's really not easy. I mean, the effort to bring people together in a bipartisan, non political way and just in a practical way has year after year proved very difficult. And Congress can't really get there so far.

23:30

Speaker C

But I've seen you on stage managing to thread that needle. What have you found is successful when it comes to finding that middle ground?

23:52

Speaker D

Well, I think there are a couple of things. One is I'm very curious. You know, I like to ask questions and learn. I mean, I guess that's why I like writing books and I like doing research. It's like solving a puzzle. And I think some people like, like doing math, they like doing equations. I like solving these kind of puzzles. Secondly, I think the way I approach it is that I'm not there when I'm interviewing somebody to express my opinion. My job is to help bring out their thinking in ways that, that will be meaningful to an audience that's listening to them. So I pride myself on making my questions as short as possible and not repeating them and not saying why they're important and just make them short and give people the chance to say, oh, what is on your mind? What are you thinking about? That's what I want to get to. I don't want your talking points. I want to know what you're thinking about. And then the other thing I think that's really important and some people don't do it is listening what are people saying? And then figuring out the follow up to that. So that's something I try hard to do because some people, well, they have their list of topics and they just go through them. But wait, you just said something really interesting. Can I follow up on that?

24:00

Speaker C

What did you mean exactly? I'm always hesitant to give too long a list of questions before an interview.

25:11

Speaker D

Yeah, no, you, you've done very well with me. I had no idea where we were going, but I trusted you. That is part of being an interviewer too, is trust.

25:17

Speaker C

So when we wrote our top 10s and P global sustainability trends to watch for the year ahead, what we wrote was energy expansion and sustainability will develop as intertwined imperatives shaping an increasingly fractured global energy future.

25:26

Speaker D

We saw that in the Greenland issue between the United States and Europe. I mean, that was very jarring. And people talk about a rules based international order that is disappearing and Canada's Prime Minister called it a rupture. Others might say that might go in too far. But people are confused and they seeking some kind of clarification to realize that the assumptions that you've had about how the world works some way since before we were all born, since the end of the Second World War, the way the world economy has worked, that you have such a free movement of goods, of ideas, of services, of peoples crossing borders. And on each of those cases, the barriers are going up right now and we're in a different kind of world. And recognizing we're a different kind of world and understanding where it goes and how far it goes in the other direction is I think where we are. And for me that's an underlying question because whether you talk about sustainability, whether you talk about energy supply, we talk about trade, all of these things unfold in a global network. I mean, you were talking about what people are doing in Australia, in Asia or in Europe. And these sense of these global communities are, how much are these, all these links being disrupted?

25:41

Speaker C

Is there any session on there that you're aware of that has trust in the title? I'm just thinking the idea of trust, it's so foundational, but it's also not something I really see on conference agendas.

27:01

Speaker D

You know, that's a good idea. You know, you don't think about competence until it's not there. I mean, you were in London during the financial crisis in 2008 and I've been thinking that trust is like that too. You take it for granted and it's only when it's not there that that you are aware of it.

27:12

Speaker C

So I'm thinking a lot about trust. I'm thinking a lot also about communication. Over the past year, so much of the sustainability space has been about what language do you use, what language is safe to use to communicate about your climate or broader sustainability strategies.

27:28

Speaker D

Yeah, I think that's true. And I mean, I think companies, universities, other organizations that struggling about it. And I hear from financial institutions that you have one vocabulary now that you have to adapt for the United States and quite a different vocabulary that you need for your regulators in Europe and these two are not congruent. And so I think that for some of your listeners on this podcast, this is a front and center issue that they're struggling with. I was with a Japanese group the other day and they had their net zero, but then they had their latest energy strategy. And one of their scenarios is not net zero by 2050. And they never had that before. And it's because of AI and the electricity demands and therefore needing more natural gas. I think what we'll see at Cyril and I think in general people are struggling with is that if we're in an era now where suddenly you need a lot more electricity, how do you do it? Wind and solar and batteries, does that do it? How much more natural gas do you need in generation? When do those small modular reactors or that fusion come into the picture? What about something which is where I really started in the energy industry when I started studying, it was at the Harvard Business School, is energy efficiency, which I've always thought of as actually one of the largest energy resources, is just be more efficient in how you use it. But it's also the least dramatic and the least compelling, but it has enormous impact. When you look at energy use per GDP for the United States or European countries, that number's going down so much that people never focus on that. It's not visually interesting. You don't have beautiful pictures or things. But I think actually energy efficiency is truly one of the most important energy sources that we have.

27:44

Speaker C

Well, it's going to take all sectors and solutions from all different parts of the world, I think to really address all these big challenges we're talking about.

29:38

Speaker D

That's right. You need a local perspective, a national perspective and a global perspective. And I think that one of the things I'm really looking forward to and counting on for Sere Week 2026 is that global perspective that we can all learn a lot from.

29:47

Speaker C

Well, Dan, I've asked you lots of questions today, but what have I not asked?

30:02

Speaker D

I think it is that this world of energy transition so far looks also to be a world of energy addition. I think we do need coming out of COVID now. It's been a few years looking at that experience, seeing what we can learn from it. And how do we need to kind of rethink energy transition in terms of its dynamics and the climate issues in terms of implementation timeframe. And also I think we haven't talked about is backlash. And I think in Europe, if you look at some of the parties we hinted at that there's a backlash as well. And So I think as one goes forward with these policies, need to make sure that these policies are inclusive because you want them to be solidly grounded and so they can survive the electoral cycle. And so so much is how do you get that balance? And I think that's what all of us who are concerned about these issues need to keep in mind.

30:06

Speaker C

For our listeners who maybe are not

31:06

Speaker A

familiar, when you're talking energy addition, you're

31:08

Speaker D

talking about, well, energy addition means that, yes, wind and solar, tremendous growth, but conventional energy is growing as well. In the 70s, people talk about north south divide, which is about commodity prices between developed and developing countries. Now I a north south divide around the issues of climate. And it comes down to not saying that putting climate aside, but getting the priorities right. Because it goes back to what you were saying before. There are the short term, if countries can't deliver economic growth, governments don't survive. And this is the real issue. In the developing world, you'll see India with big goals for renewables, but also conventional energy growing as well. And one of the things that we see is that natural gas, there's always this debate when is oil going to peak or not? And I could have graphics showing them a very wide span. I still go back to what I said in the new map think probably in the2030s is when we see oil demand peak. But it's a plateau. It's not a sharp decline. Based upon what we know today, natural gas longer see great growth for wind and solar. Batteries are really an important part of the equation. And then we get into where are those batteries being built? And we're back to our geopolitical questions. Which people, when they talk about energy transition or sustainability, didn't think about this other thing where energy transition collides with geopolitics, geopolitical tension. So I think it turns out the world is more complicated than any of us want it to be.

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Speaker A

Today we heard from saraweek chair Dan Jurgen about what to expect from the conference in Houston, Texas, March 23 through 27. This event is an opportunity to take the temperature of the energy world in a fractured geopolitical landscape. As Dan put it, we're experiencing the end of the kind of globalization that we've known for the past three and a half decades. At Sarah Week and throughout 2026, we'll be hearing about how the energy and technology sectors are converging in the face of growing energy demands. And this is largely driven by AI. We'll also hear about the growing role of copper in the energy transition and throughout all these conversations, I'll be asking, where does sustainability fit into the equation? How do you balance near term energy priorities with longer term sustainability priorities? As we heard today, there's no easy answer to that question, but on this podcast we'll keep asking.

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Speaker B

And please stay tuned for upcoming episodes where we'll bring you more interviews from Sarah Week 2026.

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Speaker A

Thanks for tuning in to this episode of All Things Sustainable. If you like what you heard, please subscribe, share and leave us a review wherever you get your podcasts.

33:39

Speaker B

And a special thanks to our agency partner, the199. See you next time.

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