The Energy Futures Initiative’s (EFI) President and CEO Ernest Moniz, along with Stephen Comello (EFI Foundation Senior Vice President) and Rick Westerdale (EFI Executive Director), addressed audiences at CERAWeek 2023 in Houston, Texas. They discussed energy security, clean energy investment, and supply chain challenges. Moniz participated in three panels, talked to reporters, and met with leaders, including U.S. Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm and U.S. Special Envoy for Climate John Kerry. Moniz and Comello also used the EFI Foundation’s Energy Futures Finance Forum (EF3) framing paper (published in February) to explain decarbonization’s bankability challenges. Meanwhile, Westerdale emphasized that the United States must decide what role it will play in supplying natural gas globally to advance the low-carbon energy transition.
See our photos of Moniz with Granholm and Kerry.
The Moniz and Comello Panel
At the CERAWeek panel, “Addressing Barriers to Bankability of Clean Energy Projects,” on March 7, Moniz and Comello expanded upon the points they made at our recent Washington, D.C. EF3 event about the challenges of decarbonization investment opportunities. At CERAWeek, Moniz discussed how technological innovation will be necessary but not sufficient for enabling the low-carbon energy transition and that attracting the large quantities of capital needed will be the main challenge. The panelists focused on ways to address bankability barriers to clean energy investment.
Read our tweet and our LinkedIn post promoting the panel to learn more.
The Moniz and Bordoff Panel
At the CERAWeek session, “The Geopolitics of Energy Security and Transition,” on March 8, Moniz and Jason Bordoff, the founding director of the Center on Global Energy Policy at Columbia University’s School of Public and International Affairs, discussed the clean energy transition and geopolitics. Moniz said that as U.S.-China tensions rise, the countries may struggle to work together on climate action goals, but the most important thing is for each country to make their own progress. He also touched on how supply chains have become unhealthy.
CERAWeek News Coverage
Moniz was quoted in an Axios news article about how oil and gas executives and policymakers disagree on the longer-term role that fossil fuels will play in the clean energy transition. He highlighted how the world will need to use natural gas as a fuel source over the next 50 years. An Upstream Online news article also quoted from Moniz’s speech about U.S.-China tensions and the impact that could have on climate action. To learn more about this coverage, read the In the News page of our website.
– Georgia Lyon, Communications Associate
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