Even with major emissions reductions in the United States and EU, the world has little chance of achieving global net-zero emissions by 2070, much less 2050, without significant changes to the Asia-Pacific energy mix. The next US administration should pursue a well-funded “whole of government” presidential initiative to work with Asia-Pacific countries on viable clean energy strategies and projects within a revived US multilateral trade, aid, and investment approach.

The United States and its allies in civil nuclear cooperation have struggled in recent years to compete against state-owned nuclear enterprise exports. Since nuclear energy agreements establish decades’ long relationships between the vendor and purchasing countries, and the United States and its allies wish to export their high safety and nonproliferation standards along with technologies, it is vital that the United States regains its position of global leadership on nuclear energy exports. As Russia and China seek out third-party countries with demand for nuclear energy, can the United States and its allies determine how to cooperate on co-financing agreements and become greater than the sum of their parts?

2019 appears to be ending bleakly for the old guard of the energy sector—recent third quarter (Q3) reporting paints a gloomy picture: across the industry, profits have plummeted despite rising oil production. Observers have blamed those results on several potentially transitory headwinds, but are they actually what’s driving the concerning outlook?