Energy & Environment

Special Report: Three lessons from Riyadh and Glasgow, as climate change collides with an energy shock

By Frederick Kempe

The world is experiencing more energy transition than revolution, climate adaptation is critical, and politics will indelibly shape the energy future.

Disarming Putin’s energy weapon: Ukraine must connect to EU grid

By Anders Åslund

With Vladimir Putin seeking to restrict energy supplies to Ukraine, it is increasingly clear that Kyiv must connect to the European electricity grid in order to reduce its vulnerability to Kremlin blackmail tactics.

Bending the Asia-Pacific coal curve is critical to taming climate change. COP26 is making progress.

By Robert F. Ichord, Jr.

Recent coal pledges are new examples of the type of cooperation with emerging and developing countries that will be necessary to curb emissions and help countries implement their national climate commitments.

Ukraine faces energy crisis as Putin weaponizes gas and coal supplies

By Aura Sabadus

As the winter season draws closer, Ukraine faces a looming energy crisis on multiple fronts which could lead to domestic political instability and deepen the country’s dependence on Vladimir Putin's Russia.

What future for the Western Sahel?

By Richard Cincotta and Stephen Smith

The Western Sahel is in a demographic impasse. To work their way out of this dilemma, Sahelian governments must shift a significant part of their development focus and funding to policies and programs aimed at preventing adolescent marriages and childbearing, promoting girls’ education, securing women’s participation in public- and private-sector workplaces, and achieving small, healthy, well-educated families.

Can innovation save the planet?

By Dan Peleschuk

Policy heavyweights Bill Gates and John Kerry and experts from the UAE and Kenya joined the Atlantic Council at COP26 in Glasgow, Scotland, to discuss the technological breakthroughs that can make a lasting impact on climate change.

Ukraine’s dangerous Winter Olympic obsession

By Nicholas Bell, Lukas Straumann

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has declared his intention to bring the Winter Olympics to the country, but environmentalists fear the initiative will cause irreparable damage to some of the most valuable mountain ecosystems in Europe.

The net-zero kingdom: A third way

By Andrea Clabough

Released to great fanfare, Saudi Arabia's new green pledges represent an attempt to build a clean future on the bedrock of fossil fuels. The viability of that approach is far from certain.

Experts react: Can COP26 negotiators sustain the momentum?

Atlantic Council experts deliver insightful analysis on the COP26 developments that will matter most in the fight against climate change.