Energy Gang’s year in review: the highs, the lows, the people and the technologies of 2025
Energy Gang
Wood Mackenzie
4.6 • 1.3K Ratings
🗓️ 18 December 2025
⏱️ 63 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
It’s the final Energy Gang of the year, and host Ed Crooks is joined by regulars Amy Myers Jaffe, Director of NYU’s Energy, Climate Justice and Sustainability Lab, Shanu Mathew, a portfolio investor and manager, and Melissa Lott, a systems engineer and energy analyst, to take stock of an exciting year for energy.
The buzzword of 2025 was undoubtedly AI. Data centres transformed the outlook for power demand, and rising electricity prices put pressure on a new US administration that is determined to focus on affordability. As the shockwaves from advances in AI spread out across the industry, everyone started talking about “bring your own power” and flexible loads on the grid. Meanwhile battery deployment soared, as businesses looked for solutions to the challenges raised by variable renewable generation and rising demand.
The crew discuss permitting reform in the US, congestion pricing for cars in New York – one of the more positive stories of the year – and exciting times for nuclear power. The reality of new nuclear technologies was the subject of intense debate in 2025. Does the future of nuclear power really lie in small modular reactors, or do more established proven designs actually have a better chance to accelerate deployment?
Join us for the hot topics that shaped energy in 2025, and will keep on making headlines in 2026.
The article on air pollution reduction referenced by Ed and Melissa you can find here: https://news.cornell.edu/stories/2025/12/congestion-pricing-improved-air-quality-nyc-and-suburbs
Books mentioned on the show include:
Breakneck: China’s quest to engineer the future by Dan Wang
House of Huawei: The secret history of China's most powerful companyby Eva Dou
Consumed: How big brands got us hooked on plastic by Saabira Chaudhuri
We hope you have a great holiday season and a very happy New Year. The gang will be back on January 6th.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | LNG 20206 is the premier global conference and exhibition for the LNG industry, taking |
| 0:07.1 | place in Doha, Qatar, on the 2nd of the 5th of February, 2026. |
| 0:11.8 | The event will highlight how LNG can meet growing demand for energy, drive economic development, |
| 0:16.5 | and enable a lower carbon future. |
| 0:18.7 | It will also explore issues including the impact of AI, changing ESG |
| 0:22.3 | regulations, emerging low carbon fuels including hydrogen and ammonia, and ways to cut methane emissions. |
| 0:28.6 | To understand where the industry is heading, LNG 2026 is the place to be. |
| 0:33.3 | Explore the exhibition floor, see the latest technologies in action and hear from the experts. |
| 0:38.1 | Register today at LNG26.com. |
| 0:46.1 | Pause number one. |
| 0:47.7 | My brain just exploded with how big that number is. |
| 0:50.2 | Compared to where things were not that many years ago, before battery prices got to where they're going. I'm going to place a bet that they're going to be a lot even bigger next year. And so we'll see if I'm right. That's my bet. We have a number estimate? Do we want to get into it? Do we want to do an underover? Because I'm in. That'd be great, yes. Hello. Hello and welcome to the Energy Gang, a discussion show from Wood McKenzie about the fast |
| 1:17.0 | changing world of energy. |
| 1:18.4 | I'm at Crooks. |
| 1:19.4 | And on this show, we're going to be doing our review of 2025. |
| 1:22.6 | We're going to be looking back on the highs, maybe some of the lows of the past year in energy. To talk about what's been another eventful year, we've invited back three of our favorite |
| 1:31.3 | people onto the show. Melissa Lott is a partner for Energy Technologies at Microsoft. |
| 1:35.3 | Hi, Melissa. How are you? |
| 1:37.3 | Hey, doing well, Ed. It's great to be here. I'm really looking forward to this discussion. |
| 1:41.3 | Absolutely, great to have you here. And, of course, always the standard disclaimer, you're speaking strictly in a personal capacity, |
| 1:48.4 | not expressing the user on Microsoft Corporation or anything like that. |
| 1:51.8 | That's correct. Just my brain. That's all I brought today. Just my brain and my opinions. |
... |
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