Podcasts - Oxford Institute for Energy Studies
A world leading independent energy research institute
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OIES Podcast – Update on China-Russia gas relations
09/18/2025
OIES Podcast – Update on China-Russia gas relations
In this latest OIES podcast, from the China and Gas Programmes, James Henderson talks to Michal Meidan and Vitaly Yermakov about their latest comment on developments in China-Russia gas relations. The podcast starts with an overview of a number of important moves involving Chinese purchases of sanctioned Russian LNG cargoes and the signing of new pipeline gas export contracts during the recent visit of President Putin to Beijing. The purchases of LNG from the Arctic LNG-2 project are assessed for their commercial and political impact, and we consider the implications for the further development of LNG trade and the potential development of new LNG projects in Russia. From a pipeline perspective, we examine the expansion of two existing export contracts between Russia and China and look at the realistic prospect for the new Power of Siberia 2 contracts being fully realised. We discuss the potential commercial terms and their implications for Russia’s gas industry and also for China’s emerging role as an important swing buyer and seller of LNG into the global market. Finally, we discuss the geopolitical implications of these gas market developments and how we should interpret China’s apparent willingness to increase engagement with Russia while seemingly ignoring western sanctions.
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OIES Podcast – Rethinking Europe’s energy trilemma
09/05/2025
OIES Podcast – Rethinking Europe’s energy trilemma
In this latest OIES podcast, Michal Meidan and Bill Farren-Price talk to Michael Martin Richter about the complex trade-offs in Europe’s energy transition and the need to balance energy security, industrial competitiveness and sustainability. They discuss the key takeaways from a joint workshop organised by the Oxford Institute for Energy Studies and the Hanns Seidel Foundation UK and highlight a number of challenges facing Europe: First, the energy price premium that hinders industrial competitiveness. Second, despite a desire to accelerate the energy transition, Europe is facing growing political friction and pushback against the costs of the energy transition. Third, governments need to manage the shifting geopolitical landscape and the need to manage complex dependencies on Russia, China and the US.
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OIES Podcast – Climate performance of SAF and energy-from-waste with CCS
08/29/2025
OIES Podcast – Climate performance of SAF and energy-from-waste with CCS
In this podcast, Hasan Muslemani speaks to Mathieu Lucquiaud and Stuart Walker about their forthcoming OIES paper which comparatively evaluates the climate performance of using waste biomass for two rising practices: as input into energy-from-waste facilities coupled with CCS (EfW with CCS) or for the production of sustainable aviation fuels (SAF). The podcast discusses the lifecycle assessment approach which the authors follow in their study and highlight key results including the net-negative emissions arising from both practices and other avoided environmental impacts. The podcast concludes with key policy implications and recommendations for the complementary development of both the EfW+CCS and SAF sectors.
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OIES Podcast – What Next for Oil Markets?
08/21/2025
OIES Podcast – What Next for Oil Markets?
In this podcast, Bassam Fattouh discusses with Paul Horsnell the latest developments in oil market and the outlook for the rest of this year and 2026. Paul Horsnell had a long career in commodity analysis as Head of Commodities Research for Standard Chartered Bank, Head of Commodities Research at Barclays and Head of Energy Research at JPMorgan. Before moving to banking, Paul was a senior research fellow at OIES and just recently he has been elected as the Chair of Board of Governors of the Oxford Institute for Energy Studies. The podcast addresses some key questions shaping the oil market including: How has oil supply and demand evolved so far this year? How credible is the ‘oil glut’ story? What are the dynamics of inventory building in OECD and non-OECD countries? Why has oil market volatility remained relatively low despite heightened geopolitical risk? What explains OPEC+’s latest decision to gradually return its voluntary cuts, and what are its implications on oil market balances? What is the next chapter for US shale? How are the financial and physical layers of the oil market interacting in the current context of heightened uncertainty? What is the oil market outlook for Q4 2025 and 2026?
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OIES Podcast – Breaking Down the Bill: Electricity Price Components and the Design of Efficient Retail Tariffs
08/11/2025
OIES Podcast – Breaking Down the Bill: Electricity Price Components and the Design of Efficient Retail Tariffs
In this latest OIES podcast from the Electricity Programme, Anders Hove talks to Research Fellow Dimitra Apostolopoulou about her latest presentation on electricity prices as part of the Oxford Institute for Energy Studies annual Energy Transition Event in June, which focused on various themes, including assessing the pace of electrification in multiple sectors. In this podcast, they delve into the factors driving higher electricity prices and explore what can be done to bring them down, both to ease the financial burden on end consumers and to send the right price signals for the electrification of transport, heating, and industry. They break down the components of electricity bills and examine how the shares of these components compare, with particular focus on wholesale and network costs and their projected trends. The conversation also highlights the critical role electricity prices play in shaping investment decisions for generation and flexibility resources, influencing electricity consumption patterns, and advancing electrification efforts. Finally, the podcast considers how both upstream and downstream electricity markets must be reformed to achieve more efficient and affordable pricing.
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OIES Podcast – Reflections on the Bonn Climate Conference
08/07/2025
OIES Podcast – Reflections on the Bonn Climate Conference
In this latest OIES podcast Michal Meidan talks to James Henderson about his recent comment on the Bonn Climate Conference which was published in July 2025. In the podcast they discuss the role of the Bonn conference and its place in the ongoing climate negotiations, as well as the key themes on the agenda. They assess why the negotiations were delayed for two days, why the topic of finance pervaded all the discussions and what the outcomes mean for the outlook for COP30 in Brazil in November. They look at how the topics of mitigation, adaptation, the Loss and Damage Fund and the role of fossil fuels were debated, as well as considering the future of climate negotiations overall and the chance that COP30 could lead to heated conversations about whether the process is fit for purpose. The podcast also covers the geopolitics of the climate negotiations, with the backdrop of the withdrawal of the US from the Paris Agreement, and assesses the chances of new and more ambitious emissions and other climate targets being set by all the COP delegates by the time COP30 takes place in just over three months time.
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OIES Podcast – Gas quarterly and market update
07/30/2025
OIES Podcast – Gas quarterly and market update
In this latest OIES podcast, from the Gas Programme, James Henderson talks to Jack Sharples and Anouk Honore about the latest Gas Quarterly and their thoughts on the current state of the global gas market. Jack opens the podcast with a review of the current market looking at price movements over the past three months and assessing the key geopolitical and commercial factors which caused an initial decline and then as spike towards the end of June. Anouk picks up the story with a review of Europe gas demand, which has continued many of the trends seen in the winter of 2024/25, highlighting the increasing volatility of gas demand in the power sector, the struggle for demand recovery in the industrial sector and the impact of the weather on residential consumers. Finally, Jack reviews global LNG supply, the main shifts in demand in Asia and the impact on LNG availability to Europe. He then looks at how LNG fits into the overall European supply picture before concluding with a look at the storage market and what it implies for future prices.
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OIES Podcast – The new US budget bill and US EV and battery supply competition with China
07/24/2025
OIES Podcast – The new US budget bill and US EV and battery supply competition with China
In this podcast Anders Hove talks to Milo McBride and Ray Cai about EV and battery supply chains in the US in the wake of the passage of the new budget bill, and what these changes mean for US competition with China in this space. Milo McBride is a Fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, and Ray Cai is Associate Fellow with the Energy Security and Climate Change Program, Center for Strategic and International Studies. McBride’s focus is on battery metals, and he notes that while there are still US subsidies available for cooperation with Canada and other allies on mining of critical minerals, the focus of these subsidies likely to shift from battery minerals to other metals related to national security. Canadian cooperation on critical minerals mining for EVs may shift more towards Europe and the UK as a result. On battery technology, though tariffs have prompted a shift towards more US production, especially by Korean manufacturers, Ray Cai notes that new Foreign Entity of Concern (FEOC) regulations for battery subsidies have the potential to inhibit technology transfer, since even manufacturing lines or parts from China could be off limits. This podcast is a follow-up on a recent Oxford Energy Forum, 2025 EVs and battery supply chains: Issues and impacts’. McBride’s article, ‘North American battery metals enter a new era of uncertainty,’ and Cai’s article, ‘The US battery value chain: A fork in the road’, are available [] in the Oxford Energy Forum Issue 144 on our website.
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OIES Podcast – The EU Proposal to Ban Russian Gas Imports
07/24/2025
OIES Podcast – The EU Proposal to Ban Russian Gas Imports
In this latest podcast, from the Gas Programme, Jonathan Stern talks to Katja Yafimava, Agnieszka Ason and Mike Fulwood on their latest paper on the EU ban on Russian gas. In May 2025, the European Commission published a Roadmap outlining various measures aimed at phasing out all Russian pipeline gas and LNG imports into the EU which was followed by a legislative Proposal in June. It stipulates firm prohibitions on importing Russian gas and providing long-term LNG terminal services to Russian customers to apply from 1 January 2026, with transitional allowances for existing contracts up to January 2028. The proposal also introduces comprehensive transparency and traceability requirements, and also places an obligation on Member States to develop National Diversification Plans by March 2026, outlining Russian gas phase-out measures. However, as the authors discuss in the podcast, although the Proposal marks the most decisive move towards phasing out Russian gas to date, it may become a roadblock rather than a roadmap towards a Russian gas-free future. It risks undermining the commercial and legal positions of European gas importers, places additional financial and administrative burdens on them and places energy solidarity amongst the Member States under strain.
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OIES Podcast – From Scarcity to Scale: The New Economics of Energy
07/08/2025
OIES Podcast – From Scarcity to Scale: The New Economics of Energy
In this latest OIES podcast from the Electricity Programme, Dimitra Apostolopoulou talks to the Director of Research at the Electricity Programme and Senior Research Fellow Rahmat Poudineh about his latest paper titled “From Scarcity to Scale: The New Economics of Energy”. In this podcast, we begin by explaining how our energy system is shifting from an operating-expense model tied to fuel burn to a capital-expense model dominated by upfront hardware. Once a solar or wind asset is installed, each additional kilowatt-hour costs almost nothing, changing the economics of the energy sector. Next, we discuss how cheap, clean electricity is the bedrock of deep decarbonisation and how clean-tech manufacturing exhibits a “winner-takes-most” where early movers achieve significant cost advantages. Related to this, we move to energy security in the new energy paradigm, where governments must diversify gigafactory and refining capacity, build strategic mineral buffers, stress-test supply chains and harden an increasingly digital grid against cyber threats. As zero-marginal-cost generation becomes dominant, markets will need to pay for capacity, flexibility, and services through long-term anchors, granular locational-temporal prices, and open auctions for storage, demand response, and fast frequency support. We conclude the podcast with some thoughts on future decarbonised energy systems and addressing remaining innovation gaps, where regulators must act as system choreographers rather than gatekeepers, so millions of distributed energy resource “dancers” can stabilise the grid without unfairly shifting costs.
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OIES Podcast – Issues in the Australian Gas Market
07/03/2025
OIES Podcast – Issues in the Australian Gas Market
In this latest OIES podcast, from the Gas Programme, James Henderson talks to Graeme Bethune about his latest paper on the Australian gas market and the policy failures that have led to concerns over whether there is sufficient supply for domestic customers, especially on the East Coast. After a brief introduction on the structure of the market, Graeme outlines the key state and federal policies which have led to mismatches of supply and demand in NSW and Victoria, where the regulatory burden has meant that upstream investment has been significantly delayed. Queensland has provided a source of imports but also have export priorities via its LNG plants and has been reluctant to divert extra supply south to states where environmental and other lobby groups have slowed new fossil fuel development. Ironically, this has now led to coal plants being kept open and talk of LNG import terminals to balance energy demand. Meanwhile other Australian states continue to pursue gas supply options at different paces, highlighting the contradictions in a country where state governments have as much if not more power than the federal government on many energy issues.
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OIES Podcast – European Traded Gas Hubs
06/25/2025
OIES Podcast – European Traded Gas Hubs
In this latest OIES podcast, brought to you by the Gas Programme, James Henderson talks to Patrick Heather about the latest in his decade long series of reports on the European traded gas hubs. After reviewing the key metrics that he uses in his analysis Patrick looks at the liquidity of the key gas hubs in Europe and highlights the dominant position which TTF has now established, as it essentially dwarfs the rest of Europe in terms of volumes traded. This does not make the rest of the hubs irrelevant, he points out but does mean that they are highly correlated with price movements on the TTF, which has now, he argues, become a global hub used by traders in gas markets across the world as a benchmark. Meanwhile NBP, which had been equally important a decade ago, has now become a regional sterling-based hub and much less relevant on the global market. Finally, he compares TTF with Henry Hub in the US and JKM in Asia and finds that, if anything, TTF has a more important global role as it sits at the heart of a major importing region with a very liquid trading market and the ability to offer significant risk management options.
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OIES Podcast – AI’s Indirect Impacts On Climate Outweigh Concerns Over Its Direct Energy Footprint
06/17/2025
OIES Podcast – AI’s Indirect Impacts On Climate Outweigh Concerns Over Its Direct Energy Footprint
In this latest OIES podcast from the Electricity Programme, Dimitra Apostolopoulou engages in a discussion with Charlie Wilson, Professor of Energy and Climate Change at the Environmental Change Institute, University of Oxford, and Dr. Yee Van Fan, Senior Research Associate at the same institute about their latest paper titled “AI’s Indirect Impacts On Climate Outweigh Concerns Over Its Direct Energy Footprint” which was part of the recent Oxford Energy Forum on Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Its Implications For Electricity Systems. Charlie opens the discussion by presenting a taxonomy of AI’s impacts on energy systems, categorising them into direct, indirect, and systemic effects. We then elaborate on the direct impacts of AI on electricity systems, highlighting potential localised challenges that may emerge. The focus then shifts to the indirect impacts of AI, i.e., the energy consumed or saved by using AI in various domains, where Yee Van talks about the challenges of quantifying them. The podcast concludes with a reflection on the further research and strategic actions needed to enhance understanding and governance of AI’s indirect contributions to the energy transition.
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OIES Podcast – Green Steel Standards and Definitions
06/10/2025
OIES Podcast – Green Steel Standards and Definitions
In this podcast, Hasan Muslemani speaks to Paulo Carvalho about key takeaways from their forthcoming OIES research paper on green steel standards and definitions. The podcast provides an overview of different terminology and examples used to describe low-carbon emission steel in the market today and evaluates reasons why complexity and divergence exist between different standards and regions. The authors also discuss results of interviews held with key industry experts including steel buyers over perception and demand for the green product, before concluding with recommendations for industry to overcome challenges and enable investment in low-carbon technologies.
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OIES Podcast – Taking stock of latest developments in China’s electricity demand and power sector reforms
06/06/2025
OIES Podcast – Taking stock of latest developments in China’s electricity demand and power sector reforms
In this latest podcast Michal Meidan talks to Anders Hove about some of the latest developments in China’s power sector. They discuss impressions from Anders’ recent trip to Beijing, insights on electricity demand and the latest (rather confusing) moves in power sector reforms. Michal and Anders also talk about the outlook for renewable deployment in China as well as the implications of electrification on oil demand.
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OIES Podcast – Artificial Intelligence (AI) and its implications for electricity systems: A focus on the AI arms race and electricity needs
05/28/2025
OIES Podcast – Artificial Intelligence (AI) and its implications for electricity systems: A focus on the AI arms race and electricity needs
In this latest OIES podcast from the Electricity Programme, Dimitra Apostolopoulou talks to Senior Research Fellow David Robinson and Independent Researcher Plutarco Naranjo about the Oxford Energy Forum (OEF) issue titled “Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Its Implications for Electricity Systems”. In this podcast, we provide an overview the OEF and discuss David’s and Plutarco’s paper titled: “The AI arms race and electricity needs”. The conversation begins with a summary of what AI is and how Large Language Models (LLMs) contribute to an increase in data centre energy needs with their training and inference phases. Building on this, David discusses how renewable energy and other sources, such as nuclear, can mitigate the direct impacts of AI and power the surge in data centre demand. The discussion then broadens to examine AI’s indirect influence on climate change, followed by insights into how AI could improve the operation of decarbonised and decentralised power systems. Plutarco also addresses the cybersecurity risks associated with these increasingly complex systems. Finally, the conversation turns to the role of policy in guiding the sustainable development of AI to support the broader energy transition.
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OIES Podcast - Update on methane emissions
05/23/2025
OIES Podcast - Update on methane emissions
In this latest OIES podcast James Henderson talks to Jonathan Stern and Maria Olczak about their latest research on methane emissions in the energy sector. Firstly, Jonathan outlines his thoughts on what progress has, or has not, been made since methane emissions became a focus of industry attention five years ago. He summarises his thoughts by outlining his four “A”s – awareness of the issue has improved, agreements have been signed underlining its importance, aims to improve the situation have seen targets created but achievements have been somewhat more limited and disappointing. Jonathan also discusses the impact of the Trump administration on US methane emission targets and incentives and considers the impact on the LNG industry. Maria then picks up the topic from an EU perspective, discussing how the EU methane regulation could be transformative for the global gas market and could change the way that the EU selects its sources of gas supply. She looks at the biggest practical and technical hurdles ton its implementation and considers whether the Commission’s new focus on competitiveness and affordability could dilute the impact of the regulation in the years ahead.
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OIES Podcast – Carbon Capture and Utilisation (CCU)
05/14/2025
OIES Podcast – Carbon Capture and Utilisation (CCU)
In this podcast, Hasan Muslemani speaks to Nnaziri ihejirika about carbon capture and utilisation (CCU) as a carbon management tool and its role in the energy transition. The podcast discusses different definitions of CCU and of emerging carbon utilisation pathways, including biochar production, manufacture of concrete and aggregate materials, and production of e-fuels and e-chemicals. The podcast also highlights issues around storage permanence and interactions with CCS and carbon removal developments.
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OIES Podcast – The future of Russian gas flows
05/06/2025
OIES Podcast – The future of Russian gas flows
In this latest OIES podcast, from the Gas Programme, James Henderson talks to Bill Farren-Price and Jack Sharples about their latest research on the future of Russian gas flows. Bill first provides some context for the discussion in terms of the search for a ceasefire in Ukraine and the development of US-Russia relations, highlighting the possibility of sanctions being removed on Russian LNG. He discusses the potential impact of the arrival of LNG from the Arctic LNG 2 project, which has been hardest hot by sanctions to date, and considers the various incentives and price outcomes. Jack then considers pipeline flows, looking at the various routes for Russian gas to Europe and discussing the practical, regulatory and contractual challenges that would face any rebound in gas exports. His overall conclusion is that it will be difficult to see any significant short term increase, and that by the time Russian gas could return it will be encountering a much more competitive gas market as new LNG projects come online.
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OIES Podcast – Gas quarterly and market update
04/28/2025
OIES Podcast – Gas quarterly and market update
In this latest OIES podcast, from the Gas Programme, James Henderson talks to Bill Farren-Price, Jack Sharples and Anouk Honore about the latest Gas Quarterly and their thoughts on the current state of the global gas market. Bill opens the podcast with a review of the current market drivers and the main catalysts of the recent decline, with a focus on the impact of US tariffs as well as more fundamental gas supply and demand. Anouk picks up the story with a review of Europe gas demand over the winter of 2024/25, highlighting the increasing volatility of gas demand in the power sector, the struggle for demand recovery in the industrial sector and the impact of cold weather on residential consumers. Finally, Jack reviews global LNG supply, the main shifts in demand in Asia and the impact on LNG availability to Europe. He then looks at how LNG fits into the overall European supply picture before concluding with a look at the storage market and what it implies for future prices.
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OIES Podcast – EVs and Battery Supply Chains: Issues and Impacts
04/25/2025
OIES Podcast – EVs and Battery Supply Chains: Issues and Impacts
In April 2025, the China Programme published an issue of the on the topic of EV and battery supply chains. The aim of the Forum was to think about how other world regions are seeking to react to the rapidly increasing dominance of China in global battery and EV supply chains. In this podcast Bill Farren-Price talks to Anders Hove to get an overview of the key themes of the Forum. In particular, they discuss the implications of the Trump administration’s tariffs for EV supply chains in the US and Mexico, how developing world economies are navigating the need to work with China while not becoming overly dependant on new technology imports, and how European countries are facing difficult choices when attempting to localize battery production while protecting home industries. A common theme is diversity: while all countries face similar challenges, and are deploying well-established policy tools, their different starting conditions and resource endowments makes a common approach unlikely. Fragmentation is even evident in Europe, where EU efforts at localizing manufacturing and encouraging tech transfer run up against differing priorities of automakers and member states like Hungary. The strategic and economic importance of the car industry makes it inevitable that countries will continue to search for ways to localize production and compete with China. But China’s first-mover advantage and the immense scale of China’s domestic EV market will make it difficult to replicate China’s success.
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OIES Podcast – Economics of Electricity Grid Interconnections: A Heterogeneous Markets’ Design Context
04/16/2025
OIES Podcast – Economics of Electricity Grid Interconnections: A Heterogeneous Markets’ Design Context
In this latest OIES podcast from the Electricity Programme, Dimitra Apostolopoulou talks to Doctoral Fellow Anas Damoun about his latest paper co-authored with Rahmat Poudineh titled “Economics of Electricity Grid Interconnections: A Heterogeneous Markets’ Design Context”. In this podcast, we discuss the critical role of interconnections in the energy transition as well as analyse the numerous benefits, e.g., technical, commercial and economic, they entail. We differentiate between homogeneous and heterogeneous interconnections since they connect countries with different market structures. We provide insights into the magnitude of interconnection benefits that depend on their efficient utilisation, which is harder to achieve in the heterogeneous case. Next, Anas discusses ways of improving the utilisation of heterogeneous interconnections with the use, among others, of long-term cross-border contracts and distancing cross-border scheduling from real-time dispatch. Last, we discuss the overall challenges that interconnections face and ways to overcome them.
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OIES Podcast – The UK’s Decarbonisation Objectives, the Role of Great British Energy, and REMA
04/09/2025
OIES Podcast – The UK’s Decarbonisation Objectives, the Role of Great British Energy, and REMA
In this latest OIES podcast from the Electricity Programme, Dimitra Apostolopoulou talks to Senior Research Fellow Malcolm Keay about his latest paper titled “The UK’s Decarbonisation Objectives and the Role of Great British Energy” and the latest developments and key challenges of the Review of Electricity Market Arrangements (REMA). We start our discussion with the great progress the UK has made in its decarbonisation targets. We continue diving into the challenges of scaling up investments in renewable generation, storage resources, and demand-side flexibility, as well as the role of Great British Energy. We then focus on REMA and discuss the latest developments, such as locational pricing. Last, we discuss REMA’s main missing components, such as policy alignment, retail markets, nuclear generation and interconnections. An example of policy misalignment is the UK’s goal to become an artificial intelligence (AI) superpower and the rising electricity prices. AI is very energy-intensive, and countries with lower electricity costs will likely enjoy a competitive advantage compared to the UK.
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OIES Podcast – Challenges and Opportunities for Renewable Hydrogen in Europe
04/03/2025
OIES Podcast – Challenges and Opportunities for Renewable Hydrogen in Europe
In this latest OIES podcast James Henderson talks to Anne-Sophie Corbeau about the EU’s plans for renewable hydrogen, with a particular focus on the industrial sector. The discussion starts with a description of the current state of the hydrogen market in Europe before defining the nature of renewable hydrogen in particular and explaining why it is being given such a high priority by the EU. The targets set in the RED III directive are then discussed, before we move on to the actions being taken by individual member states to implement them and the implications of the divergences that are emerging between countries. We then look at particular sectors which are being affected by the new initiatives and look at the question of cost competitiveness and the need to incentivise demand in order to support the transition process. Finally, we examine the need for new infrastructure and assess whether enough is being done to ensure that the full hydrogen value chain is in place.
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OIES Podcast – Decarbonisation in Europe and scenarios for gas
03/25/2025
OIES Podcast – Decarbonisation in Europe and scenarios for gas
In this latest OIES podcast, brought to you by the Gas Programme, James Henderson talks to Kong Chyong about his latest paper on the EU’s decarbonisation plans and the implications for natural gas. Kong talks through five scenarios which he has modelled in detail and which focus on targets for future emissions, the implied carbon prices and the impact on gas demand in the region. The scenarios range from an aggressive “Accelerated Path to Net Zero”, mirroring the EU’s current plan to reduce emissions by 90% by 2040 before reaching net zero in 2050, to a much more conservative “Low Carbon Price” scenario. Kong highlights that the more rapid decarbonisation scenarios have a dramatic impact on gas consumption but also imply a very high carbon cost. He outlines his policy recommendations which largely involve finding a balance between achieving climate goals and avoiding the imposition of an excessive cost on the European economy.
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OIES Podcast – Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM)
03/21/2025
OIES Podcast – Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM)
In this podcast, Hasan Muslemani speaks to Dan Maleski about developments around the EU’s Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM), specifically discussing how the mechanism would be enforced in practice and concerns that importers into the EU and exporters in non-EU countries have. The podcast also reflects on on-going policy changes in CBAM that are aimed at mitigating risk of circumvention and resource shuffling by exporters into the EU.
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OIES Podcast - Europe’s cobalt supply security: what is the role of the Democratic Republic of Congo and of China?
03/14/2025
OIES Podcast - Europe’s cobalt supply security: what is the role of the Democratic Republic of Congo and of China?
In this latest OIES podcast Michal Meidan talks to Bryan Bille from Benchmark Mineral Intelligence about Europe’s need for cobalt as part of its efforts to achieve carbon neutrality and grow its lithium-ion battery industry, and the role of the DRC within that. Michal and Bryan talk about Europe’s growing demand for cobalt, how policies aim to develop new sources of cobalt and encourage domestic processing. They also discuss the challenges associated with market concentration in the DRC for mining and in China for processing the trade-offs European countries will have to make as they balance supply chain diversification with decarbonisation targets.
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OIES Podcast – China’s green industrial policy
03/05/2025
OIES Podcast – China’s green industrial policy
This OIES podcast is based on two articles in the on Green Industrial Policy. James Henderson talks to Michal Meidan and Anders Hove about their thoughts on China’s position in the energy transition and the role of innovation as part of its green industrial strategy. In the first part of the podcast Michal outlines her thoughts on why China now sits at the heart of the global energy transition and how countries in the West could, and perhaps should, address the questions of China’s dominance in certain green technologies and the minerals required in their implementation. Anders Hove then considers how innovation, when linked with industrial policy, has played a major role in the rapid development of technologies in China, with technology transfer, local content rules and the use of government-supported pilot projects and industrial clusters all being used as part of the process. Anders discusses whether other countries can learn from this combination of strategies and Michal concludes with thoughts on how the West can avoid dependency on China while still pursuing ambitious climate goals.
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OIES Podcast – Diversification and de-risking in new energy supply chains: Latin America’s Positioning in Critical Minerals Geopolitics
02/26/2025
OIES Podcast – Diversification and de-risking in new energy supply chains: Latin America’s Positioning in Critical Minerals Geopolitics
In this podcast Anders Hove talks to Tom Moerenhout and Victoria Barreto Vieira do Prado about how Latin American countries are navigating the geopolitics of clean energy supply chains. Moerenhout and Vieira do Prado, scholars at Columbia University’s Center on Global Energy Policy (CGEP), discuss the challenges Latin American countries face in moving upstream from minerals extraction to higher-value parts of the supply chain. While most countries with critical minerals are seeking to localize processing or battery materials production, this is likely to prove difficult in practice. In particular, minerals processing and cathode or anode production are highly specialized fields, and depend heavily on access to key technologies and skills. However, there are reasons for optimism. The authors note that Latin American countries offer several advantages for Chinese, European and other clean energy players, in terms of stability and ESG (environmental, social and governance) standards, that could give them a leg up in attracting clean energy manufacturing. This podcast is the second in a series on ‘Responding to the China challenge: Diversification and de-risking in new energy supply chains.’ Moerenhout and Vieira do Prado’s article, ‘Latin America’s Positioning in Critical Minerals Geopolitics,’ is available in the on our website.
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OIES Podcast – Gas Quarterly and Outlook for Gas Markets in 2025
02/19/2025
OIES Podcast – Gas Quarterly and Outlook for Gas Markets in 2025
In this latest OIES podcast, brought to you by the Gas Programme, James Henderson talks to Jack Sharples and Anouk Honore about the analysis which they contributed to the latest Gas Quarterly, which is available on the OIES website. The podcast starts with a discussion of current pricing trends before moving on to consider key issues around gas supply via pipeline and LNG to the European market, in particular the impact of the shutting of the Ukraine transit route. Anouk then talks about the main drivers of European gas demand, with a particular focus on the increased volatility in gas demand in the power sector as a result of the expansion of renewables in the electricity system. Having then discussed industrial and residential demand, we turn back to Jack who looks at the current state of storage and expectations for the rest of winter, including the impact of gas demand in Asia. The podcast concludes with both fellow giving their views on the outlook for the remainder of 2025, looking at the overall global gas balance and reflecting on the fact that 2025 may well be the last year of tight gas supply before the anticipated wave of new LNG projects starts to arrive in 2026.
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