Jason Bordoff

As problematic as I think it was to roll back significant parts of the Inflation Reduction Act, the biggest risk to a faster clean energy transition was how policymakers, particularly in the U.S.

and Europe, come to perceive the supply chain risk of dependence on China.

Because it's different to buy a solar panel.

We're not buying electricity from China.

We're buying products and technologies that are necessary to do that, like a battery or a solar panel.

If it is perceived as an unacceptable risk, that's a large amount of sand, not a small amount of sand in the gears of the clean energy transition because it takes a really long time and a lot of money to build those supply chains elsewhere.

I think people are going to look potentially a bit differently at relative risk.

When you look around the world right now and you say, well, there is a concern about dependence on China's dominant position in some of these clean energy supply chains.

But there is risk all around.

And the view of the United States, certainly at least the Trump administration, as you said, has been to double down on demand.

petrostate dominance.

If you're the largest oil and gas producer in the world, why are we buying all this cheap, clean energy from China?

Energy security comes from being self-sufficient, producing more oil and gas than we need.

And I think today's conflict is a reminder that in an interconnected global market, there's a limit to that.

So like, who would you want to be right now?

I think being a BYD dealer, the Chinese EV maker in Brazil is like a pretty good place to be.

Because people are going to be a bit concerned about what might come and view oil security in a way we haven't seen before.

That is, in fact, as I said before, the national trauma of the 1970s, where we really moved as a policy issue to increase domestic production, but also find alternatives to oil and use less of it.

We were getting 20 percent of our electricity from oil in the 1970s.

And within a small number of years, you know, we brought that close to zero.