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People use mobile phones during a blackout after Hurricane Rafael knocked out the country's electrical grid, in Havana, in November. On Tuesday, the island suffered yet another blackout when a major power plant failed.
Cuba suffers yet another blackout
For the third time in two months, all of Cuba was plunged into darkness as the island nation’s power infrastructure shuddered to a halt on Tuesday.
It’s the latest blow for the Caribbean country’s 11 million people, who are grinding through the worst economic crisis in decades. Rising energy prices and sluggish post-pandemic tourism have worsened the effects of economic mismanagement by the Communist government and longstanding US sanctions. In recent years, fully 10% of Cuba’s entire population fled the island altogether.
Especially painful: Cheap oil imports from friendly Venezuela have fallen. For years, Cuba has exported doctors and spies to Caracas in exchange for discounted crude. But Venezuela, struggling with US sanctions of its own, has begun prioritizing Asian buyers who can pay in hard currency. Imports from Russia and Mexico have also fallen, starving Cuba’s decrepit, oil-fired energy plants.
Politically, there has been little effect … so far. But it was only three years ago that Cuba saw its biggest anti-government protests – for food and freedom – in decades. A ferocious crackdown silenced dissent, and hundreds remain in prison, but the economic hardship has only deepened since then.
And don’t forget Los Yanquis. Donald Trump has tapped Cuban-American Sen. Marco Rubio, an ultra-hawk on Cuba, to be his top diplomat. Things are set to get darker still for the Cuban regime.
3D illustration of a robot hand reaching out to touch a lightbulb.
The AI energy crisis looms
According to a CNBC analysis of US government data, a single data center operating at 85% capacity consumes as much electricity as 710,000 households or 1.8 million people. There are currently 3,000 data centers across the US, by one estimate, with the greatest number in Virginia (477), Texas (291), and California (285). With artificial intelligence as a leading factor, power demand from data centers is expected to increase 160% by 2030, according to Goldman Sachs. And major tech companies such as Google and Microsoft have revised their environmental goals because of their AI ambitions.
The incoming Donald Trump administration promises to take a deregulatory approach across the board. Lee Zeldin, a former congressman Trump has tapped to lead the Environmental Protection Agency, said he wants to “make America the AI capital of the world.”
So all signals point to Biden’s climate goals, soon in the rearview mirror, slipping further out of grasp.
What role does natural gas play in a clean energy transition?
Listen: How does natural gas fit into the shift toward a cleaner energy future? In this episode of Energized: The Future of Energy, host JJ Ramberg and Enbridge CEO Greg Ebel sit down with former CongressmanTim Ryan of Ohio. They discuss how energy jobs have revitalized Ohio’s economy, the role workers from the energy industry could play in the upcoming US election, and how natural gas can be combined with renewables to create a cleaner, more efficient energy transition.
Listen on Apple, Spotify, Goodpods, or wherever you get your podcasts.
- From AI to food recycling: Innovations transforming the energy sector ›
- Can we keep energy affordable, safe, and secure? ›
- Pulitzer Prize-winning author Daniel Yergin on energy security in a changing world ›
- Introducing “Energized: The Future of Energy”, a new podcast series ›
- Partnering for the future: Indigenous communities and energy transition - GZERO Media ›
Partnering for the future: Indigenous communities and energy transition
Listen: Investing in infrastructure isn’t the only important factor in the energy transition. It’s also about partnering with Indigenous peoples in energy projects. In this episode of Energized: The Future of Energy, host JJ Ramberg and Enbridge CEO Greg Ebel talk to Justin Bourque, President of Athabasca Indigenous Investments, and Mark Podlasly, Chief Sustainability Officer of First Nations Major Project Coalition. They discuss how a partnership deal between Enbridge and 23 Indigenous communities in northern Alberta is improving life for those communities and how Indigenous peoples are investing in the energy transition—and their futures.
Listen on Apple, Spotify, Goodpods, or wherever you get your podcasts. New episodes will be published every other Thursday.From AI to food recycling: Innovations transforming the energy sector
Listen: Making change is all about innovation. That’s no different when it comes to the energy sector. In this episode of Energized: The Future of Energy, host JJ Ramberg and Enbridge CEO Greg Ebel talk to two innovators in the energy sector. First, we hear from Uli Homann, a Distinguished Architect in the Cloud and Enterprise business at Microsoft, about how generative AI is putting new strains on our energy systems—and creating new opportunities to make the grid more efficient.
Then, JJ talks with Caitlin Tessin, Vice President of Strategy and Market Innovation at Enbridge, and Ryan Begin, CEO of Divert, about how we can create natural gas from a surprising source: wasted food.
Listen on Apple, Spotify, Goodpods, or wherever you get your podcasts. New episodes will be published every other Thursday.
- Can we keep energy affordable, safe, and secure? ›
- Pulitzer Prize-winning author Daniel Yergin on energy security in a changing world ›
- Introducing “Energized: The Future of Energy”, a new podcast series ›
- Energized: The Future of Energy - GZERO Media ›
- Partnering for the future: Indigenous communities and energy transition - GZERO Media ›
Introducing “Energized: The Future of Energy”, a new podcast series
In our rapidly changing world, the critical role of energy is constantly evolving. Global energy investment continues to rise, with investment in low carbon fuels and renewables growing rapidly. Competing needs like affordability, energy security, and cleaner, more sustainable options make it hard to know what the future of energy will look like in the short or long term.
That’s why we’re diving into the biggest ideas about the current energy transition to learn where we’re going, and how it will impact geopolitics, the economy, and your bottom line. We’ll explore all those topics on “Energized: The Future of Energy”, a new five-part podcast series from GZERO Media's Blue Circle Studios and Enbridge premiering on Thursday, September 5th.
On each episode, host JJ Ramberg will be joined by Enbridge CEO Greg Ebel along with some of the top experts in the industry, including Pulitzer prize-winning author Daniel Yergin, former Canadian Member of Parliament Lisa Raitt, and former Ohio Congressman Tim Ryan. We’ll also talk about how technology is changing the game, and the diverse partners and Indigenous communities that are shaping the future of energy. This series is a must-listen for anyone interested in the next phase of the energy transition.
Listen on Apple, Spotify, Goodpods, or wherever you get your podcasts. New episodes will be published every other Thursday.
- Pulitzer Prize-winning author Daniel Yergin on energy security in a changing world - GZERO Media ›
- Can we keep energy affordable, safe, and secure? - GZERO Media ›
- From AI to Food Recycling: Innovations transforming the Energy Sector - GZERO Media ›
- Partnering for the future: Indigenous communities and energy transition - GZERO Media ›
Oil rig around the US Capitol.
The greatest energy boom you’ve never heard of
“A few years ago, we were energy independent, now we’re begging countries to give us gasoline.” —Former president Donald Trump
“Joe Biden has destroyed US energy independence.” —Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN)
“Since Joe Biden’s first day in office, he has waged an unprecedented war on American energy producers.” —House GOP
If we are to believe Republican politicians, President Joe Biden is waging a debilitating “war” on American energy. But is that true?
Not quite. After having to import massive amounts of foreign energy for most of its modern history, the United States became energy independent in 2019 – when Donald Trump happened to be president – thanks to the decades-long fracking and shale revolution. Domestic oil and gas production dipped briefly during the pandemic as global demand collapsed, but it quickly bounced back under President Biden.
Today, the US is the largest crude producer in the world by a mile, pumping out over 13 million barrels per day and accounting for nearly a fifth of the world’s total oil production. Indeed, the US is now producing more oil thanany country in history.
A similar story can be told for US natural gas production, which has also been setting record highs since recovering from the pandemic in 2021. As of 2022, the US exported far more natural gas than it imported – the bulk of which has been converted to liquified natural gas (LNG) and gone to Europe to ease the energy shortage created by the cutoff of Russian supplies in the wake of Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. Last year, the US overtook Australia and Qatar as the world’s largest exporter of LNG, and the country’s export capacity is only set to continue growing.
Meanwhile, the US continues to deploy renewables, such as solar power and battery storage, at a significant rate. Together, these sources are expected to make up 81% of all new electric-generating capacity in the country this year. Such growth is in large part thanks to the exponential decline in the cost of these technologies, whose uniquely steep learning curves suggest they are going to get even cheaper as they get deployed further, in turn boosting adoption, getting more competitive, and so forth.
In short, the US has quietly but surely become the world’s top energy superpower. As Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) put it in a recent op-ed, “our country has never been more energy-independent than we are today.” Much like America’s hegemony in other realms, this newfound dominance does not come without certain geopolitical upsides.
For starters, America’s large and growing market share deprives Russia, Saudi Arabia, Iran, and other petrostates of both pricing power and geopolitical leverage, lowering energy prices and boosting geopolitical stability. This was evident in the aftermath of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, when US energy exports played a major role in stabilizing global energy markets and bolstering European energy security. US oil supply growth has also kept oil prices relatively in check in the face of OPEC production cuts designed to prop them up.
Even with the “OPEC Plus” additions, the cartel currently controls less than half of the global supply of oil (and shrinking). Eventually, it will buckle under the realization that further production cuts will reduce rather than increase its revenues. When that happens, its members will give in and flood the market with more oil, sinking prices. Lower energy prices stimulate the global economy and help ease inflationary pressure.
Perhaps more speculatively (but even more exciting), domestic energy abundance could also usher in a new era of US technological advancement and productivity growth that increases living standards for all Americans and gives the nation a bigger edge in its budding competition with China. Granted, there’s more that goes into this than just ample cheap energy – but it’s certainly a good start.
If this all seems like tremendous news for America, that’s because it is. And yet, you probably haven’t heard anything about it. It’s just too politically inconvenient a feat for either party to acknowledge (let alone celebrate).
Take Republicans. They don’t want you to know about the energy boom under Biden because it contradicts a key attack line they’ve been using for decades to score political points: that unlike the pro-business, pro-American, pro-fossil fuel Republicans, ivory tower, coastal Democrats are hellbent on sacrificing the country’s energy independence, national security, and economy in a zero-sum crusade to save the environment. If it’s not happening, they don’t have to credit the opposition for it. Case closed.
Alas, it is happening, and Biden does deserve at least some credit for it. After Russia’s invasion of Ukraine sent global energy prices soaring, Biden backtracked on his campaign promise to cut domestic fossil-fuel production and urged US oil companies to “drill, baby, drill” to counteract “Putin’s Price Hike.” Since taking office, Biden has issued more permits for oil and gas drilling on public lands than Trump. His administration approved the controversial Willow oil drilling project in Alaska that had been stalled for decades and expedited the construction of an oil pipeline in West Virginia, and his marquee legislative achievements, the Inflation Reduction Act and the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, have made it easier to invest in all forms of American energy.
The odd thing is that Democrats themselves (with few exceptions) don’t seem to want to take credit for the energy boom they’re presiding over, because record-high fossil-fuel production is – at least on the surface – an awkward fit with their climate goals and a major pain point with a progressive base the Biden administration is already struggling to appeal to on the back of the Gaza war. This was a major driver of the White House’s decision in January to freeze approvals of new licenses to export US LNG – a largely symbolic move that will lower electricity and heating prices for American consumers at the expense of our European allies (and, to a lesser extent, domestic natural gas producers).
But what climate activists and White House should keep in mind is that while drilling for oil and gas does exacerbate climate change in the near term by increasing carbon and methane emissions, the alternative to more American oil and gas isn’t more clean energy – it’s more foreign oil, gas, and coal. And foreign oil, gas, and coal are far dirtier than American oil and gas. However much we may wish it away, demand for fossil fuels isn’t going anywhere for the near future; if the US were to slash its supply tomorrow, other producers would step in to fill the gap, and overall emissions would rise.
For progressives’ ambitious decarbonization policies to really work, they have to be politically sustainable. That means that they have to bring ordinary people along, not just in the future but now, and the way to do that is by ensuring low and stable energy prices. Boosting US oil and gas production as bridge fuels at the same time as we invest hundreds of billions of dollars to make clean energy cheaper and wean the world off carbon does exactly that, trading slightly higher emissions today for much lower emissions tomorrow.
This is an accomplishment Biden should be running on, rather than away from.
Ian Explains: If the US steps back from Ukraine, can Europe go it alone?
Two years into Ukraine's all-out war with Russia, Europe has had to cut off nearly all energy imports from Moscow. Can Europe secure its energy future and defend itself without relying on Russia or, depending on the November election, the United States? Ian Bremmer explains on GZERO World.
Europe is facing a critical juncture in its energy and security landscape. When Russia invaded Ukraine, European leaders rallied for a united front. But in the ensuing two years, some of these intra-European ties have shown signs of fracturing. More concerningly, Europe is no longer confident it can rely on steadfast support across the Atlantic.
Depending on the outcome, the November election in the United States could signal a death knell for American support for Ukraine. With Trump's wavering commitment to NATO and Europe facing a future without Russian fossil fuels, the region is reevaluating its energy security and defense strategies. Europe remains vulnerable despite recent price drops and increased renewable energy capacity. The continent's post-pandemic recovery, climate change-induced weather extremes, and Putin's aggression have highlighted the urgent need for energy independence.
To put it bluntly, Ukraine needs Europe now more than ever, and Europe needs to ensure it is strong enough to provide the support Kyiv relies on. No amount of weaponry shipped to Ukraine's battlefields will matter if Europe can't keep its own homes lit or its factories running
Watch GZERO World with Ian Bremmer on US public television (check local listings) and online.
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- Europe’s Russian gas dilemma ›
- Norway's PM Jonas Støre says his country can power Europe - GZERO Media ›
- NATO unity will hold no matter the US election, says Norwegian PM - GZERO Media ›
- Europe welcomes US Ukraine package, but pushes to add even more aid - GZERO Media ›
- Europe needs to strengthen its defenses, says President Macron - GZERO Media ›
- Can Europe become a global superpower? - GZERO Media ›