Energy Security and Climate Initiative Media Mentions and External Appearances
[On partisan tensions and Congressional Republicans not keeping up with public concern on climate change] I don't see sweeping climate legislation.
[On decarbonizing the heavy transport industry and the shift to electric delivery vehicles for e-commerce] The last-mile delivery is actually a fairly easy usage to electrify. It also has monetary advantages. The vehicles are used really heavily — on the road every day, running around all day — and electricity is a cheaper fuel than gasoline or diesel. Those vehicles are likely to be more expensive up front, but they’re also likely to pay for themselves.
[On the EU's proposed tax on high carbon imports] There's some concern that U.S. industry could also get caught up ... because we don't have a carbon price on industry in the United States, and we're not likely to have one in the future ... When you start getting into the details, it's an absolute bear to implement. But nonetheless Europe seems quite serious about it.
[On partisan divisions in climate change policy] Anyone who says the United States is united in working on climate change is drinking the Kool-Aid because we aren't.
On April 22, Samantha Gross discusses approaches for decarbonizing heavy transport and industry sectors of the economy at the 2021 Freedman Lecture hosted by the University of Massachusetts Amherst.
On March 19, 2021, Samantha Gross joined The LA World Affairs Council for a discussion on climate policy, domestic challenges, and geopolitical strategy.
On March 18-19, Samantha Gross spoke during the Energy Transitions 2021 conference hosted by Chatham House.
[On managing local and state opposition to the Biden Administration's goal of 100% carbon-free electricity nationwide by 2035] Given that we are going to have to build a lot of renewable generation and transmission, we need to think about how to get the public onboard — these concerns aren’t going to go away on their own.
[On the bump in crude prices] Is demand coming back for sure? Are the lockdowns lifting for good? With all these new [coronavirus] variants, who knows how long we are going to be in it? ... The deep freeze in Texas took some oil off the market, and that lost production propped up Brent prices at least in the short term ... Clearly they all want to bring back output, but the biggest question is how much of the coronavirus is behind us and that's hard to say. We're not out of it yet.
There’s a highly uneven response to the climate challenge from the oil and gas industry. The European companies are out in front, and the American ones—Exxon in particular—are lagging far behind.