The Iran war and the near-closure of the Strait of Hormuz have triggered a major shock to global oil and LNG markets.

Roughly 20 million barrels of oil per day normally move through Hormuz. The IEA says nearly all of that has been disrupted.

Oil and gas prices have surged sharply; and the disruption extends well beyond oil as Qatari LNG exports have been largely severed. Asia is especially exposed, since most Gulf energy exports flow there.

This isn’t just an oil story. It’s a “can people cook dinner” story, a reminder that geopolitics gets real once it enters the kitchen.

In this episode, David, Sara, and Ed unpack what this shock means for global energy markets, the climate, and the pace of the energy transition.

⏱️ TIMESTAMPS
00:17 — Welcome & episode overview
01:54 — How the Iran War is disrupting oil & gas markets
07:28 — 30x induction stove sales in India & accelerating tech adoption
09:38 — AI forecasts say EV sales are rising because of the war?
13:00 — The coming LNG whipsaw: glut or shortage?
16:21 — How much wilder could this get? Escalation risks
17:07 — Global recession risk from tariffs + oil shocks
17:30 — Has the Iran War accelerated peak global emissions?
19:36 — Data centers, energy demand & geopolitics in the kitchen
26:54 — What the war means for Canadian oil, gas & LNG exports
29:49 — Federal-Alberta MOU & pipeline politics
30:52 — The war's legacy: will it help or hurt the energy transition?

Send us a text (if you'd like a response, please include your email)

Follow us on:
LinkedIn
Bluesky
X/Twitter
Instagram

Energy vs Climate relies on the support of our generous listeners
Donate to keep Energy vs Climate going

Produced by Bespoke Podcasts

Vijay Gadepally joins Ed and Sara to break down the real energy footprint of AI—and why most people (and companies) are getting it wrong.

They discuss:

• How "agentic" AI systems use an order of magnitude more energy than ChatGPT.
• Whether efficiency gains can keep pace with exploding usage (spoiler: not yet).
• The one simple change that could cut AI energy use by 80%.

Vijay is Senior Scientist at the MIT Lincoln Laboratory Supercomputing Center and Co-Founder of Bay Compute and Radium Cloud. He studies what's actually happening under the hood of AI systems—and has the data to back it up. If you've been wondering whether AI is derailing the clean energy transition, or whether smarter software design could keep energy use in check, this is the conversation you need to hear.

🎙️ TIMESTAMPS
00:00:00 - Introduction & Cold Open
00:01:17 - Welcome & Guest Introduction
00:02:59 - Agentic AI: The New Energy Problem
00:04:10 - A Brief History of AI: From Expert Systems to LLMs
00:08:43 - Agentic AI vs. LLMs vs. Reasoning Models Explained
00:10:00 - The Energy Reality: One AI Node = 10-15 Homes
00:14:13 - Why Energy Consumption is Unpredictable
00:16:02 - The Big Flip: Training vs. Inference Energy Use
00:26:22 - What Does "Efficient AI" Actually Mean?
00:29:37 - Are Tech Companies Optimizing for Energy or Market Share?
00:36:20 - The Low-Hanging Fruit: Cutting AI Energy Use by 80%

Full notes & references

Send us a text (if you'd like a response, please include your email)

Follow us on:
LinkedIn
Bluesky
X/Twitter
Instagram

Energy vs Climate relies on the support of our generous listeners
Donate to keep Energy vs Climate going

Produced by Bespoke Podcasts

This episode is different. We're tackling China's energy transition, and instead of David, Sara, and Ed just talking about it, they went out and interviewed different experts on the subject.

Why China? Because it's arguably the most important energy story on the planet right now. China is the world's largest emitter. It's also the world's largest investor in clean energy. It manufactures the lion's share of solar panels, batteries, and now electric vehicles in the world.

Functionally, what happens there determines whether the world has any real shot at meeting long-term climate targets.

David spoke with Andrew Light, distinguished professor at George Mason University and former Senior Climate Official in the Biden administration.

Sara talked with Jeremy Wallace, professor of China Studies at John Hopkins and Christina Pan, a PhD candidate at Cornell researching renewable energy in China.

And Ed interviewed Hong Li, a professor at the Institute of Physics at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, and an expert on battery chemistry.

Three different perspectives followed by David, Sara, and Ed trying to make sense of it all.

🎙️ TIMESTAMPS
00:13 - Intro: The scale of China's ambition
01:44 - David Keith interviews Andrew Light
03:33 - How China took over the Solar industry
04:55 - The massive Nuclear build-out: "Too small?"
11:08 - US vs. China: The clean energy arms race
15:30 - Sara Hastings-Simon interviews Jeremy Wallace & Christina Pan
24:48 - Will China's emissions peak before 2030?
29:48 - State Control vs. Ruthless Competition: What drives the growth?
40:11 - Ed Whittingham interviews Hong Li: The view from inside China
48:34 - EvC Roundtable: What can the West learn from China's speed?

Show notes & references on episode page.

Send us a text (if you'd like a response, please include your email)

Follow us on:
LinkedIn
Bluesky
X/Twitter
Instagram

Energy vs Climate relies on the support of our generous listeners
Donate to keep Energy vs Climate going

Produced by Bespoke Podcasts