The aftershocks of the Iran war are reshaping energy markets, investment decisions, and climate politics in very different ways around the world.

David, Sara, and Ed sat down with Vijay Vitheeswaran, Global Energy and Climate Innovation Editor at The Economist and 2025 Energy Writer of the Year, to discuss the shock rippling through energy markets since the war in Iran began.

On one side are forces accelerating the energy transition like electrification, EV adoption, solar deployment, and rapidly scaling clean tech. On the other are forces pushing toward deeper fossil fuel lock in: energy security fears, coal expansion, oil investment surges, and persistent fossil fuel subsidies. Which force is actually winning?

The conversation covered a lot of ground — from samosa vendors in Delhi packing up because cooking fuel tripled in price, to what a potential OPEC collapse could mean for the oil sands.

This show's a great listen, especially if you're trying to make sense of a world where the energy transition and fossil fuel lock-in are happening simultaneously.

About Our Guest:

Vijay Vaitheeswaran is the Global Energy & Climate Innovation Editor of The Economist. He has produced numerous cover stories and won awards for his reporting. He is an accomplished public speaker and his three books have created a stir, with accolades ranging from lengthy reviews in The New Yorker to shortlisting for the FT/McKinsey Business Book of the Year prize. The Financial Times has declared him to be “a writer to whom it is worth paying attention.”

Vijay is a Life Member of the Council on Foreign Relations. He serves as an advisor on innovation to the World Economic Forum/Davos, and has taught at NYU Stern Business School and Northwestern University. Vijay is an alumnus of Harvard Business School and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

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Nuclear is having a global moment. But the story in Canada is a lot more complicated.

David, Sara, and Ed sat down with Prof. Jason Donev of the University of Calgary for a full, unsparing look at where nuclear fits in a rapidly growing and electrifying Canadian grid.

Jason is one of the clearest thinkers on energy systems in the country. He's also someone who started out opposed to nuclear and changed his mind.

We set this episode up to tackle two questions. First, what is the case for new nuclear right now, given rising electricity demand from electrification, industry, and AI. And second, why Canada, despite decades of experience, has struggled to build new projects beyond Ontario and New Brunswick.

A few things you'll hear about:

• Canada had a nuclear accident in 1952. Jimmy Carter helped clean it up.
• “Small” modular reactors can be up to 300 megawatts. A CANDU is closer to 700. “Small” is a relative term.
• Darlington’s BWRX-300 is a closely watched test case for Western SMRs. Will costs fall with follow-on units, or will nuclear repeat its Achilles heel and get more expensive?

It turned into a lively and wide-ranging conversation on costs, timelines, small modular reactors, and the deeper issue that keeps coming up with nuclear. The physics may be solved, but the politics and institutions are not.

About Our Guest:
Prof. Jason Donev is a tenured professor teaching Energy Science and Physics at the University of Calgary. He leads EnergyEducation.ca, the world’s largest and most widely used energy resource for adults.

Timestamps:
(00:00) Introduction
(02:20) Jason's journey from nuclear skeptic to advocate
(06:53) A brief history of nuclear in Canada
(12:39) Canada's nuclear accident record — what really happened
(17:56) The global nuclear resurgence: 40 countries, tripling by 2050
(20:27) SMRs: hype vs. reality
(22:58) Is nuclear being used to delay climate action?
(30:09) Why Western nuclear costs are "a joke" — and what to do about it
(31:57) Nuclear waste: real problem or political football?
(36:06) Why nuclear needs BOTH big business AND big government
(52:07) What should Canada actually do?

🔗 Related Episodes:
⚛️ The Nuclear Debate with Elizabeth May (S1, Ep. 10)
🔄 Turn the Tables
Full References & Notes

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EvC Superfan and fellow energy nerd Robert Tremblay turns the tables on Sara and Ed — asking the questions the podcast usually doesn't: how EvC started, the energy transition over the 7 seasons of the show, what's changed, and whether any of it is working.

They get into their backgrounds, the EvC origin story (are the rumours about Danielle Smith true?), how the show has evolved, and what they actually think about Canada's climate trajectory. Plus a rapid-fire round... well, at least as rapid-fire as EvC gets.

Topic Timestamps

00:00:20 — Intro and episode setup

00:01:07 — Hosts' backgrounds before the podcast

00:07:09 — Origin story: how EvC came to be

00:12:56 — How things have changed since 2020: energy data and political landscape

00:23:04 — Is the Energy vs. Climate premise still relevant?

00:30:35 — Alberta/Canada focus vs. international scope

00:34:30 — Can Alberta lead the energy transition?

00:38:48 — Climate targets: useful or counterproductive?

00:43:00 — Rapid fire questions

About Our Guest Host:
Rob Tremblay is Policy Manager at Energy Storage Canada, where he leads policy analysis and advocacy efforts across Alberta while contributing to federal and technical policy initiatives nationally. He also Co-Chairs the Board of the Calgary Climate Hub. He's passionate about advancing the energy transition and is a frequent Energy vs Climate listener and questioner.

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Energy vs Climate X Climate Books Reviews

This week we're sharing an episode from Ed's other podcast, Climate Book Reviews, co-hosted with Dr. Roger Thompson of Arizona State University.

Their guest is John Vaillant, author of Fire Weather: The Making of a Beast. (US and International - Fire Weather: A True Story from a Hotter World)

Many listeners will know Vaillant from his earlier books The Golden Spruce and The Tiger, both gripping works of narrative nonfiction. In Fire Weather, he turns his attention to the massive 2016 Fort McMurray wildfire and what it tells us about the new era of extreme fire.

In this episode:

• How the Fort McMurray fire burned for a week straight — and why traditional firefighting was useless
• The concept of "fire weather" and why wildfires are now generating their own atmospheric systems
• The oil industry's early awareness of climate change and the shift to deliberate misinformation
• Attribution science: can we prove a specific wildfire was caused by climate change?
• What hope looks like in the face of an altered climate

Chapters:
00:00 Cold Open: When Firestorms Become Unstoppable
01:00 Welcome & Introducing John Vaillant
03:00 The Fort McMurray Fire: Inside the Inferno
09:00 Writing Fire — Craft, Research & the Book's Structure
17:00 Community Heroes & Local Response
20:00 We've Altered the Climate: A Shift in Consciousness
23:00 Fire Tornadoes & Australia's Black Summer
28:00 Attribution Science: Proving Climate Change Caused This
33:00 Fire Weather: The New Physics of Wildfire
35:00 The Oil Industry Knew: The Greatest Betrayal
40:00 The Rising Wave of Wildfire Literature
42:00 Finding Hope in the Age of Fire

References & notes

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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?

References & Notes

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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

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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?

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Recorded live at the Energy Transition Centre in Calgary, David, Sara, and Ed took on one of the toughest questions in Canadian climate politics: what does energy transition actually look like for Alberta?

They dug into emissions, economics, diversification, and the uncomfortable trade-offs that tend to get glossed over in public debate.

It's a fun conversation with an extended Q&A from the live audience.

Just a note, unfortunately we had some mic issues so apologies for any audio hiccups you might notice.

🎙️ TIMESTAMPS
00:00:00 - Introduction & Welcome to Calgary
00:04:00 - Alberta's Hard Truths: Oil Dependence & Petro State Reality
00:10:00 - EV Growth & Peak Oil Demand by 2030
00:19:00 - China's Energy Bet: Lucky or Strategic?
00:22:00 - Alberta's Path Forward: What Should We Bet On?
00:25:00 - Can We Bend Emissions Without Breaking the Economy?
00:33:00 - Economic Diversification: Beyond Oil & Gas
00:42:00 - Oil Sands Resilience in a Disordered World
00:49:00 - Audience Q&A: Heavy Oil & Emissions Intensity
00:59:00 - Q&A: China and Climate Politics
01:11:00 - Q&A: Should Climate Be on Alberta's Election Agenda?
01:16:00 - Rapid Fire Q&A: TMX, Renewables vs Fossil Fuels, Carbon Tax
01:22:00 - Closing & Credits

Thanks as always to Avatar Innovations for being such gracious hosts.

🔗 LINKS

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