Within days of taking office, President Joe Biden signed an executive order to create the Justice40 Initiative. The policy aims to allocate 40% of the benefits of federal clean energy and climate investments to frontline communities. 

For the energy sector, it’s helping to shine a growing light on  “energy justice.” Historically, the current energy system has negatively impacted disadvantaged communities the most – communities that often lack access to affordable energy, are excluded from potential benefits of a clean energy economy, and suffer the greatest harms from climate change. The Energy Opportunity Lab at the Center on Global Energy Policy at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs is working to address these challenges, among many others. 

So, what progress has been made in ensuring energy justice for frontline communities? And with the energy transition continuing to accelerate in size and scale, how do we make sure disadvantaged communities aren’t left behind?

This week host Jason Bordoff talks with Shalanda Baker about the historical inequities of energy systems, and the Biden administration’s agenda on energy equity and climate justice.

Shalanda is the director of the Office of Energy Justice and Equity in the U.S. Department of Energy, and the secretarial advisor on equity. She also serves as chief diversity officer for the agency. Prior to her Senate confirmation in 2022, Shalanda served as the nation’s first-ever deputy director for energy justice. Before joining the Biden administration, she co-founded and co-directed the Initiative for Energy Justice, which provides technical law and policy support to communities on the front lines of climate change.

How can the US and Canada cooperate to meet international and domestic climate targets? 

To try and answer that question, host Jason Bordoff spoke with Catherine McKenna – the former Canadian Minister of Infrastructure and Communities and former Canadian Minister of Environment and Climate Change. 

McKenna, who recently joined the Center on Global Energy Policy as a Distinguished Visiting Fellow, was a lead negotiator of the Paris Agreement before introducing and successfully defending landmark legislation that established a carbon price across Canada. 

In this conversation, the pair discuss Canada’s decarbonization strategy, misogyny in climate politics, building US-Canadian partnerships in tackling climate change, and her hopes for this new, exciting stage in her career. 

Hydropower is one of our oldest sources of renewable energy. In 2018, hydropower made up nearly 60% of Canada’s electricity generation. In provinces like Quebec and Manitoba, hydropower makes up well over 90% of the provincial electricity supply.

One Canadian power company is looking to expand and provide hydroelectricity to its neighbors down south.

In this episode, host Bill Loveless sits down with Sophie Brochu, the President and CEO of Hydro-Québec, a Canadian state-owned utility and the fourth-largest producer of hydropower in the world.

Brochu is currently leading new efforts to expand Hydro-Québec’s reach and bring low-carbon electricity to the United States through new transmission lines in the Northeast.

But, the company is facing pushback from local groups on how and where these new transmission lines should be built.

Bill spoke with Sophie about those criticisms, the future of fossil fuel companies, and her vision for distributing and generating clean electricity throughout North America.

Most of the pressure on oil companies to make more environmentally-conscious investments is targeted at companies like Shell and Exxon. But these companies produce only 15 percent of the world’s oil and gas supply. 

The majority of oil production comes from nationally-owned oil companies, and the question of how they will respond to the clean energy transition is especially vital in Latin America where state-owned companies like PDVSA, PetroBras and Pemex dominate the region’s energy sector. 

In this episode, host Jason Bordoff speaks with a leading expert on oil markets and the Environmental Social and Governance (ESG) agenda in Latin America — Dr. Luisa Palacios. She has special insight into this topic as a former board chair of the oil refiner Citgo, an energy firm owned by the Venezuala-based nationalized oil company, PDVSA. 

Dr. Palacios is currently a Senior Research Scholar at CGEP and received a Masters degree at Columbia University. Previously, she was Medley Global Advisor’s Head of Latin America. She also worked at Barclays Capital as a Director in emerging markets research.

Dr. Palacios spoke with Jason about where Venezuela and other Latin American oil majors are headed in a moment of big market shifts. They also took a broader look at the future of oil and ESG practices in the Latin American Region.

The Biden Administration recently released a blueprint for how the U.S. could get nearly half of its electricity from the sun by 2050 called, “The Solar Futures Study.” But reaching that 50% will require an expansive, multi-sector investment of money and resources toward the clean electricity source that meets only about 4% of the nation’s power demand now.

Host Bill Loveless dug into the hows of deploying solar widely and effectively with Mary Powell, the recently-appointed CEO of Sunrun, a leading residential solar company in the U.S. 

Mary previously headed up the Vermont-based electric utility, Green Mountain Power. 

While there, Mary was known for being a disruptor in the utility space in her embrace of clean energy reforms. 

Bill and Mary spoke about the tricky nature of the residential solar market, how solar is figuring into congressional legislation and how electric utilities can work with the clean energy transition instead of fighting it.

This episode originally aired on October 20th, 2020.

From California wildfires and Gulf Coast hurricanes to flooding in China and Pakistan, the impacts of climate change have grown increasingly evident. And whether it is agricultural workers, low-income and minority communities, or the world’s poorest in the Global South, the severe inequities in who bears the burden of climate change as well as in air and water pollution is also receiving growing recognition. 

In this episode of Columbia Energy Exchange, host Jason Bordoff is joined by one of the leading reporters today writing about the links between a warming planet and such issues as race, conflict, natural disasters, and big tech: Somini Sengupta. 

Somini is the international climate reporter for The New York Times. A George Polk Award-winning foreign correspondent, she previously worked in other capacities at The New York Times as its United Nations correspondent, West Africa Bureau Chief, and South Asia Bureau Chief.

She spoke about the critical role journalists play in telling the stories that help illuminate how climate change affects families and workers around the world. 

The Biden Administration has promised that 40% of its investments in clean energy will go into disadvantaged communities that experience the worst impacts of the changing climate. But as they work to make good on these promises, there are questions about how Biden’s team will execute.

In this episode, host Jason Bordoff speaks with Heather McTeer Toney about what true climate justice should look like. She’s a former Mississippi Mayor, Obama EPA Regional Administrator and now a Climate Justice Liaison for the Environmental Defense Fund and Senior Advisor to Moms Clean Air Force.

They spoke about what it will take to elevate black and brown voices in climate policy. The conversation also touched on the massive infrastructure bill making its way through Congress, which will have a material impact on how energy systems, industry, roads, and transit are built in frontline communities.

Fossil fuel companies are under pressure from shareholders, citizens and the courts to shift their business models to reduce emissions or face huge financial consequences. There are now more than 1,500 large corporations with net-zero emission pledges, including one-quarter of the S&P 500.

In today’s episode, host Bill Loveless speaks with Mindy Lubber — President and CEO of CERES, a sustainability nonprofit that pushes private companies to integrate the risks associated with climate change into their business strategies. 

They spoke about the changes happening in the market and inside boardrooms, and whether any of it is happening fast enough.

Host Jason Bordoff sits down with Anne Pramaggiore, the president and CEO of ComEd, an electric utility serving customers in Chicago and northern Illinois. Anne joined ComEd in 1998 and, in addition to her current role, has served as the company’s lead lawyer and head of Regulatory Policy and Chief Operating Officer. She is a board member of the Chicago Federal Reserve Board and Motorola Solutions, Inc.

Among many topics Anne and Jason discuss, several include: the democratization of energy and the future of merchant generators; technological changes in the power industry; the outlook for energy storage; and changes in federal regulation and implications for utilities.

NYU’s Center for Global Affairs, the Energy Policy International Club (EPIC), and the Center on Global Energy Policy’s Women in Energy program co-hosted a public panel focused on energy start-ups. We had experts working in companies that focus on energy efficiency, clean energy finance, and technology joining us to share their experience entering these fields and offer advice on the types of skills companies are looking for. They also provided insights on how the industry is evolving as well as the current state of women in the energy start-up sector. The panel included the following experts: Ali Adler, Claire Johnson, ‎Mouchka Heller, and Angela Ferrante.