Get the latest as our experts share their insights on global energy policy.
A House committee voted to allow the Advisory Committee on Reactor Safeguards (ACRS) to decline certain application reviews.
Hear in-depth conversations with the world’s top energy and climate leaders from government, business, academia, and civil society.
Permitting reform—to allow for faster approvals on new projects—is one thing that both climate advocates and energy developers have wanted for a long time. With demand for power...
Find out more about our upcoming and past events.
Putting data centers in space once seemed fanciful. Today, a growing number of companies have started doing so.
The United Nations’ annual climate conference is set to attract representatives from around the world to discuss and evaluate the progress made by countries in reducing greenhouse gas emissions and mitigating climate change.
The Center on Global Energy Policy is providing informed insights and fostering discussions around global energy and climate policy during these crucial conversations.
I recently returned from Dubai, United Arab Emirates, where I joined roughly 84,000 people for the largest climate conference ever: COP28.
Upon returning from COP28 in Dubai late last week, the need to address the energy needs of the developing world is more pressing now than ever before.
At the annual round of international climate negotiations that are well underway at COP28 in Dubai—to limit global temperature rise to 1.5° Celsius—the needs of the developing world are front and center.
India’s growth potential will inevitably lead to increases in the country’s demand for resources and its environmental footprint.
In just a few days, world leaders will convene in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, for the biggest climate summit of the year, COP28. There, they will face the urgent task of building consensus on how to address the unfolding climate crisis.
Recent climate progress arguably owes more to industrial competition than to the 2022 United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP27) climate summit.
The Center on Global Energy Policy (CGEP) at Columbia SIPA hosted a discussion on the policy and investment choices of national oil companies in the energy transition.
Oil and gas companies have a large presence at international climate talks aimed at getting the world to sharply reduce emissions, which lead to climate change.
The Biden administration is arguing that fossil fuels can continue to be used if most of their emissions are captured.
Like any country hosting a COP climate summit the United Arab Emirates is facing intense scrutiny of its own track record.
This week, climate leaders, scholars, and activists from around the world will travel to the United Arab Emirates for the annual United Nations conference on climate change known…
The COP26 UN climate conference has kicked off in Glasgow, Scotland amidst a flurry of important moments in climate-related current affairs—an energy crisis threatens global supply chains and…
COP26 is behind us, but the work is just getting started. The world leaders who convened in Glasgow, Scotland, negotiated an agreement with positive, meaningful steps toward global…
Negotiators in Glasgow, Scotland have finally come to an agreement aimed at ramping up climate action. At COP26, host Jason Bordoff and his colleagues at Columbia University helped…
The Center on Global Energy Policy and the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law organized a discussion on what comes next for the Paris COP21 Agreement after its…
Climate change is an urgent challenge. We are nowhere on track to meet the targets of the Paris Agreement in countries around the world. Action depends not just…
Global Fellow
Founding Director, Center on Global Energy Policy; Professor, Columbia SIPA; Professor and Co-Founding Dean Emeritus, Columbia Climate School
Learn MoreSenior Research Scholar
Non-Resident Fellow
Professor, Columbia Climate School
Non-Resident Fellow
External Associate
Inaugural Fellow
Learn MoreSenior Advisor for Scholarly Affairs and Senior Research Scholar
Learn MoreFounding Director, Center on Global Energy Policy; Professor, Columbia SIPA; Professor and Co-Founding Dean Emeritus, Columbia Climate School
TBD | Munich Security Conference
TBD | Climate Security Roundtable
December 7-8 | Milken Institute: Middle East and Africa Summit
Jason Bordoff is the Founding Director of the Center on Global Energy Policy at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs, where he is a Professor of Professional Practice. He is also on the faculty of the Columbia Climate School, where he is Co-Founding Dean Emeritus.
He previously served as Special Assistant to President Barack Obama and Senior Director for Energy and Climate Change on the Staff of the National Security Council. Prior to that appointment, he held senior policy positions on the White House’s National Economic Council and Council on Environmental Quality. Earlier in his career, he was a scholar at the Brookings Institution, served in the Treasury Department during the Clinton Administration, and was a consultant with McKinsey & Company.
One of the world’s leading energy and climate policy experts, Bordoff’s research and policy interests lie at the intersection of economics, energy, environment, and national security. As a member of the Columbia SIPA faculty since 2013, he teaches and mentors the world’s future energy and climate leaders in government, business and civil society.
In 2013, Bordoff created the Center on Global Energy Policy (CGEP), which is now widely recognized as among the world’s leading energy policy research institutes, advancing evidence-based and actionable energy and climate solutions through research, dialogue, and education. (Learn more here.) In addition to serving as CGEP’s Founding Director, Bordoff co-led and created the nation’s first graduate school devoted to tackling climate change, the Columbia Climate School, from 2021 to 2023. Bordoff is a columnist for Foreign Policy Magazine and has authored numerous essays and articles for Foreign Affairs. He frequently publishes articles in leading outlets such as The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Financial Times, The Economist, and has appeared on The Ezra Klein Show, CNN’s Fareed Zakaria GPS, NPR, Bloomberg, and the BBC. His Foreign Affairs article with Meghan O’Sullivan, “Green Upheaval: The New Geopolitics of Energy,” was selected as one of the “Top Ten” print articles published in that journal in 2022.
Bordoff has extensive experience advising the private sector and non-profit organizations. He is a Senior Advisor at Permira, a global investment firm. He serves on the Temasek Sustainability Advisory Panel, and on numerous advisory boards and leadership councils, including the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, Sustainable Energy for All at the United Nations, The Nature Conservancy of New York, Foreign Policy 4 America, the New York Energy Forum. He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, the Trilateral Commission, the Oxford Energy Club, and is a Distinguished Fellow at the Institute of Energy Economics, Japan.
Bordoff graduated with honors from Harvard Law School, where he was Treasurer of the Harvard Law Review, and clerked on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. He also holds an MLitt degree from Oxford University, where he studied as a Marshall Scholar, and a BA magna cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa from Brown University.
Inaugural Fellow
December 1 | Zayed Sustainability Prize
December 3 | Release of report on AI and climate change mitigation
December 9 | Conversation with Chinese Special Climate Envoy Xie Zhenhua
David Sandalow is the Inaugural Fellow at the Center on Global Energy Policy (CGEP) and Co-Director of the Energy and Environment Concentration at the School of International and Public Affairs at Columbia University. He is the lead author, most recently, of the Sustainable Data Centers Roadmap (October 2025), Artificial Intelligence for Climate Change Mitigation Roadmap (Second Edition) (November 2024) and Guide to Chinese Climate Policy (October 2022). Mr. Sandalow hosts the AI, Energy and Climate Podcast.
Mr. Sandalow chairs the ICEF Innovation Roadmap Project. In that capacity, he has led development of roadmaps on sustainable data centers, artificial intelligence for climate change mitigation, low-carbon ammonia, biomass carbon removal and storage, industrial decarbonization, direct air capture and carbon dioxide utilization, among other topics.
Mr. Sandalow founded and directs CGEP’s US-China Program. He serves on the board of the National Committee on U.S.-China Relations and teaches a short course on the energy transition each year as a Distinguished Visiting Professor in the Schwarzman Scholars Program at Tsinghua University.
Mr. Sandalow has served in senior positions at the White House, State Department and U.S. Department of Energy. He came to Columbia from the U.S. Department of Energy, where he served as Under Secretary of Energy (Acting) and Assistant Secretary for Policy & International Affairs. Prior to serving at DOE, Mr. Sandalow was a Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution. He has served as Assistant Secretary of State for Oceans, Environment & Science and a Senior Director on the National Security Council staff.
Mr. Sandalow writes and speaks widely on energy and climate policy. In addition to the publications mentioned above, his writings include Data Centers and Their Energy Use: Trends in State Capitals, CGEP (December 15, 2025) (lead author); Can AI Transform the Power Sector?, CGEP (December 4, 2024) (lead author); Using AI to Craft Better Climate Policy, Wall Street Journal (July 20, 2023); Greenhouse Gas Emissions from the Food System: Building the Evidence Base, Environmental Research Letters (June 2021) (co-author); Finding and Fixing Food System Emissions: The Double Helix of Science and Policy, Environmental Research Letters (June 2021) (co-author); Food and Climate InfoGuide, CGEP (May 2021) (lead author); Energizing America, CGEP (September 2020) (co-author); Leveraging State Funds for Clean Energy, CGEP (September 2020) (with Richard Kauffman); Green Stimulus Proposals in China and the United States, CGEP (August 2020) (with Xu Qinhua); China’s Response to Climate Change: A Study in Contrasts, Asia Society Policy Institute (July 2020); China and the Oil Price War, CGEP (March 2020) (co-author); Decarbonizing Space Heating With Air Source Heat Pumps (December 2019, co-author); Electric Vehicle Charging in China and the United States (February 2019) (with Anders Hove); A Natural Gas Giant Awakens (June 2018) (lead author); The Geopolitics of Renewable Energy (2017) (CGEP and Harvard Kennedy School, co-lead author); Financing Solar and Wind Power: Lessons from Oil and Gas (CGEP, 2017, co-author); and The History and Future of the Clean Energy Ministerial (CGEP, 2016). Other works include Plug-In Electric Vehicles: What Role for Washington? (Brookings Institution Press, 2009) (editor), Overcoming Obstacles to U.S.-China Cooperation on Climate Change(Brookings Institution, 2009) (with Ken Lieberthal) and Freedom from Oil (McGraw-Hill, 2007).
Mr. Sandalow is a member of the Zayed Sustainability Prize Selection Committee, Electric Drive Transport Association’s “Hall of Fame” and Council on Foreign Relations. He is a director of Enagás, SA, a Distinguished Fellow at the Oxford Institute for Energy Studies and a Distinguished Senior Fellow at the Atlantic Council. Mr. Sandalow is a graduate of the University of Michigan Law School and Yale College.
Senior Advisor for Scholarly Affairs and Senior Research Scholar
November 28 | Abu Dhabi Finance Week – Asset Abu Dhabi
November 30 | Abu Dhabi Finance Week – R.A.C.E Sustainability Summit
TBD | Abu Dhabi Global Markets: Sixth Wave of Innovation
Dr. Karen E. Young is Senior Advisor for Scholarly Affairs and a Senior Research Scholar at the Center on Global Energy Policy at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs (SIPA). She is also a Senior Fellow at the Middle East Institute, where she previously founded and led the Program on Economics and Energy. She regularly briefs corporate and investment audiences on geopolitics, energy security, and the geoeconomics of the Gulf.
Previously, Dr. Young was a Resident Scholar at the American Enterprise Institute and Senior Resident Scholar at the Arab Gulf States Institute. She has taught at George Washington University, Columbia SIPA, and the U.S. Department of State’s Foreign Service Institute. She was a Research Fellow at the London School of Economics and Political Science’s Middle East Centre and led a seminar series on emerging markets in the Middle East and North Africa at Johns Hopkins SAIS. From 2009 to 2014, she was Assistant Professor of Political Science at the American University of Sharjah.
Dr. Young is the author of The Economic Statecraft of the Gulf Arab States (2022) and The Political Economy of Energy, Finance and Security in the United Arab Emirates (2014), and editor of Energy Transitions of the Middle East (2024) and GCC Hydrocarbon Economies and Covid (2023). She has contributed chapters to several edited volumes on Saudi Arabia, China and the Middle East, the Gulf and the Horn of Africa, and renewable energy in the Gulf. Her research and commentary have appeared in the Financial Times, Bloomberg, Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, Lawfare, Al-Monitor, Journal of Arabian Studies, Georgetown Journal of International Affairs, Current History, and Middle East Policy, among other publications. She has testified before Congress and is frequently quoted in international media, including the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, Financial Times, and Bloomberg, as well as NPR, CNBC, CBS, and AFP.
Her research has been supported by the Smith Richardson Foundation, Carnegie Corporation of New York, the Fulbright Program, IREX, the American Council of Learned Societies, the Woodrow Wilson Center, the U.S. Department of State’s Middle East Partnership Initiative, the APSA MENA Fellows Program, and the Emirates Foundation.
She is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.