Rym Momtaz, Olivia Lazard, and Milo McBride examine the options for EU-U.S. cooperation on the clean energy transition.
U.S. President Donald Trump perceives climate change not as an environmental crisis but as a geostrategic opportunity.
Rym Momtaz sat down with Olivia Lazard and Milo McBride to explore whether Europe can still cooperate with the United States on the clean energy transition.
[00:00:00] Intro, [00:01:48] The Trump Administration’s Approach to Climate Change, [00:10:32] EU-U.S. Cooperation on Climate Action, [00:20:38] The Future of the Clean Energy Transition
Olivia Lazard, May 9, 2025, “What Are Rare Earths and Why Does Everyone Want Them?,” BBC Radio.
Milo McBride, Narayan Subramanian, June 5, 2025, “America’s Electric Vehicle Surrender,” Foreign Policy.
Milo McBride, May 29, 2025, “Clean Energy’s New Cold War: Can the U.S. Compete With China?,” Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
Milo McBride, Daniel Helmeci, May 1, 2025, “The Global Trend of Turning Power Plants Into Clean Energy Hubs,” Emissary, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
Milo McBride et al., February 26, 2025, “How the U.S. Can Stop Losing the Race for Clean Energy,” Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
Milo McBride, Daniel Helmeci, February 26, 2025, “Minerals, Manufacturing, and Markets: Foreign Policy for U.S. Energy Technology and Minerals,” Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
Rym Momtaz
Hello, and welcome to this episode of Europe Inside Out. I'm your host, Rym Momtaz, Editor-in-Chief of Strategic Europe, Carnegie Europe's blog, where twice a week, we publish punchy short analysis on all things strategic in Europe.
In today's episode, we're delving into how the EU and the United States could still cooperate on the global climate agenda in light of the Trump administration's withdrawal from the Paris Climate Accord for the second time, might I add, and him leaning into what the President calls “Drill, Baby Drill,” and defunding climate policies. It is a vast topic, and one we could not possibly do justice to in just 30 minutes. So today we're going to be focusing on the clean energy transition bit of it. And under that, we're going to talk about possible areas of common interest between the U.S. and the EU, and possible areas of common action between the two, as well as how to keep the United States engaged beyond the Trump administration itself.
To discuss this, I have the pleasure of welcoming Olivia Lazard, a fellow at Carnegie Europe who focuses on the geopolitics of climate and the green transition.
Rym Momtaz
Hi, Olivia.
Olivia Lazard
Hi, Rym.
Rym Momtaz
And Milo McBride, a fellow in the Sustainability, Climate, and Geopolitics program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington, D.C. Hi, Milo.
Milo McBride
Hi, Rym. Thanks for having me.
Rym Momtaz
So welcome to you both. Let's perhaps first start by defining what we're discussing, given how vast the issue is. And so here we're talking specifically about the green, clean energy transition. So what would you put under that headline, Olivia?
Olivia Lazard
Originally, we were talking about any technology related to decarbonization and therefore oriented to mitigation efforts in the face of climate change. So we're talking about anything related to solar panels, wind turbines, batteries, hydrogen, etc. But this time around, I'm going to add something in light of what we're facing in terms of geostrategic constellation, particularly coming from the U.S., where I would label anything related to the green tech as being obviously primarily oriented towards mitigation. But we're seeing new forms of technologies related to geo-engineering, related to the mitigation of climate change effects and impacts as opposed to its drivers.
Rym Momtaz
Like what?
Olivia Lazard
Well, we're talking about anything related to carbon dioxide removal all the way up to solar radiation management and stratospheric insemination or dissemination, or potentially solar paints, anything related to technologies that are designed to try and change the calibration of the relationship between the Earth and the Sun. And the reason why I'm integrating these technologies within the large chapeau of green transition tech is because we can anticipate already that these technologies that I'm talking about, which have massive security implications are going to be greenwashed into a discourse about climate action and climate efforts.
And the reason why I'm putting them out there already is to actually try and differentiate the two because we still need to obviously put an onus and a huge amount of effort going into mitigation efforts as opposed to mitigation efforts of the actual effects of climate change. But because of the energy trajectory that we're on, we're likely to see more and more lumping of different technologies together, which I'd like to avoid.
Rym Momtaz
Lovely. Thanks, Olivia. And you, Milo, what would you put under that headline?
Milo McBride
Looking at where we are right now with regard to global emissions, it is an increasingly broad and technologically daunting task to decarbonize the global economy. As Olivia mentioned, 10 years ago, this was about photovoltaics, this was about lithium-ion batteries. Really today, I think the frontiers of the challenge are in some of these so-called harder-to-abate sectors that include how we decarbonize maritime shipping, aviation, steel production. Steel production alone is about equivalent to the emissions from passenger vehicle fleets. That is something that is a lot less sexy and less on the table. But to these important goals, they have incredible importance. Along with these frontier technologies, I think the industrial space is probably that next area that we're looking at, writ large. Would love to turn to thinking perhaps about how the issue of carbon management in relation to these questions of intervention is an increasingly challenged one. We're going to need to remove massive amounts, gigatons of carbon from the atmosphere to have any planetary stability in the future. We're seeing those first-of-a-kind facilities percolate, but it is economically, technologically quite difficult still. Those I view as the frontiers and keen to discuss further.
Rym Momtaz
What's interesting when I listen to both of you define just the contours of this one topic in this huge issue that we all have to face is that we're both talking about things that have been around in the past and in the present, the very real industrial emissions. And then what Olivia was talking about, which is pushing us forward into the future and doing much more tech-forward and mitigation work. Milo, I just want to start with you and maybe start with a very basic question, which is, is any of this a totally lost cause in that? Is the Trump administration just truly allergic to anything related to climate and carbon mitigation? Or do they actually have interest in some of the opportunities that this issue can create?
Milo McBride
An important question here in DC right now. Just for our listeners, as we are discussing this, the massive Biden-era green industrial policy is being deliberated on Capitol Hill, and will be decided in the next couple of weeks, basically the fate of whether the U.S. has any hedge in low-carbon technologies or whether it remains a hydrocarbon superpower. I think that's important to first caveat. The second thing before diving into which technologies could have political salience is to understand how Trump 2.0 views energy, climate, and the confluence between the two, because it is starkly different than what we saw the last time around. This Trump administration has a new approach to perhaps climate denialism to energy policy. You could view that as one that no longer denies anthropogenic climate change as the result of fossil fuels. Senior figures acknowledge that. They just would argue that the impacts of fossil fuel combustion are less material than depriving the world of burning more coal for the sake of industrial development. It obfuscates the scientific literature. It is a quite potent narrative here in DC.
Rym Momtaz
Just to bring it down to even more prosaic and pedestrian language. What they're saying is, yes, there is an impact on the climate, but actually, the impact of moving away from the usual we've been doing business is more expensive for humans, so we're just going to keep doing what we've been doing.
Milo McBride
Thank you. That is a great summation and the crux of the argument. With that, the Trump administration, the second one, has become infatuated with this idea of baseload power. They are not interested in the variability, the intermittency of renewables, which are being dealt with today by battery storage and synchronous condensers and grid forming inverters, a new way of maintaining the grid with high renewables. They are interested in consistent output of energy from coal, gas, nuclear, and most interestingly, from geothermal, which is where I think the real opportunity here is. I think we all know the story on nuclear. It takes a while. It's quite expensive. But what's happening right now in the United States in the geothermal sector is underappreciated and potentially revolutionary. Geothermal energy is the ability to produce 24/7 clean energy extracting heat, abundant heat from the Earth's crust. It's been constrained by these niche resources in Kenya, in Iceland, in Nevada. Today, and ironically, thanks to fracking engineers from the U.S. oil and gas sector, many of whom became concerned about climate change, have figured out ways of drilling complex holes to sustainably extract the heat from the Earth's crust and provide 24/7 clean power and clean heat.
Rym Momtaz
Isn't that interesting? Because I think the average person listening has always maybe associated fracking with being a big “no-no” and very bad for the environment, very bad for climate. Now you're saying that actually the people who are involved with fracking may provide one of the solutions to provide a cleaner source of stable energy.
Milo McBride
That's well said, and it's a remarkable... I will also caution. These new innovations do not require the toxicity of fracking, the seismicity of fracking. One of the technologies that's currently being deployed in Bavaria doesn't even require water. It's deeply climate resilient that way. The sustainable opportunity here is remarkable. Then secondly, to your point, the story of this as an off-ramp and as a just transition for the United States oil and gas workforce is a remarkable one that here at Carnegie DC, we're really interested in leaning into. It is possibly the only opportunity for renewable energy source to thrive under the Trump administration and could be a major shift change in adding another tool to the decarbonization mix.
Rym Momtaz
So, Olivia, I want to bring you in, first of all, to weigh in on what Milo just said. Do you agree with what he laid out and how he assesses, first of all, this Trump second administration's approach to this issue? Then second, we'll talk about where you see U.S.-EU cooperation existing or not.
Olivia Lazard
Thanks, Rym. I'll be very curious to discuss the geothermal where I know that indeed, there is a lot of efforts going in Europe, most notably and ironically and beautifully in a way, in the Rhine region as well, we can come back to it.
Rym Momtaz
In Germany?
Olivia Lazard
Yes. The original bedrock, let's say, of the European project is moving away from the cold and steel community towards a lithium community, which is a beautiful sign, essentially, of Europe moving into the future. But just before we go to the potential for cooperation or not, I'd like to maybe come back on the perception, essentially, that I have of what is happening in the US under the second Trump administration. I think that there is a confusion at the moment in Europe and in many parts of the world about Trump being essentially some climate denier. I agree that it's not that it has a new flavor to it as you were both raising, but I think that I would actually defer in large parts about the denial aspect. When I hear President Trump talking about Canada as a faucet for the United States, as potentially the 51st American state. When I hear him talking about Greenland and the stakes in the Arctic, or also about Panama, for that matter, I see the signs of a person who has understood essentially some of the deepest geostrategic consequences that are associated to climate change. I'm just going to cite them very, very quickly because we tend to essentially only associate climate change to shocks and disasters, all the likes of inundations, floodings, fires, storms, etc.
We all know that these are accelerating. This is only one basket of impacts. The second basket of impact is around structural scarcity, particularly around water. Structural scarcity essentially has an impact on soil, on ecological integrity. That means that it obviously has impact on agricultural production, but not just. When you look at Taiwan, for example, over the last two or three years, it's been facing essentially some emergencies in terms of semiconductor production and productivity as a result of structural drought that they're trying to address. The third basket of impact is something that will essentially recast the foundations of geostrategic power. Climate change is essentially causing or midwifing the redistribution of species, of natural resources, and as a result of what we call climate niches, understood as habitable and productive areas around the globe.
Rym Momtaz
So where people can actually live and prosper.
Olivia Lazard
Exactly. And where they can have certain types of industrial economic activities on the basis of somewhat available and easily extractible natural resources.
That means that essentially what we are seeing is a Trump administration that has understood, to a large extent, some of the same things that President Putin has understood, that the future of power adaptation is going to play within the greater northern region, and that in the meantime, as As we move towards a warmer world, what is necessary is to essentially rebuild the foundations of American power. And that's what Trump is all about, America first, and rebuilding essentially the industrial capacity for the U.S. to adapt in this warmer world and to concentrate as much as possible energy capacity, material extraction and material processing capacity, and to move essentially the relationship between economics, politics, and territories going forward. Essentially, they're trying to increase the energy base of the U.S., trying to play on their strength, which is LNG at the moment and fracking and a number of things, investing into various types of technologies, which include indeed renewables in some cases, but which also include indeed geoengineering.
And that's where big-tech actors also come in because they have the financial power to invest into those different types of technologies. And they're also very close now to the White House.
Rym Momtaz
So to summarize, the Trump administration recognizes that climate change is happening. They also see it as an opportunity to renegotiate the basis of their power and make sure that the U.S. is positioned in a prime way by making sure that they control some of the territory that will come out as a winner of the climate change that we are all living through, and also make sure that they have access to securing rare earths and the raw materials that will be necessary for the tech revolution that is happening, because people forget that the AI revolution requires huge data centers that require huge energy and water supplies. And so with that definition, Milo, I wonder if you could tell us where you think the EU can find common ground to cooperate with the Trump administration on, because is it even possible for the EU to succeed in this climate transition without any cooperation with the U.S.?
Milo McBride
Yeah, all great points. Just to answer the first question and then circle back to some of the calculations on the Trump administration's geostrategic positioning. I think, first of all, for Europe, there is absolutely a way forward without the United States. United States has been playing ping-pong, withdrawing and coming back in for a decade. We need policy continuity, and we need actors across the global north and south who will commit to a trajectory and stand course. I'd love to come back to certain areas of potential alignment within U.S. states, within U.S. corporates, potentially with a couple of technologies. But I also want to paint perhaps a slightly more cynical picture of the Trump administration's view of climate response, climate disaster, and also compare that and tie that to where right-wing politics in the U.S. are going on things like solar radiation management and climate intervention, we're actually seeing a huge backlash from the political right, from the MAGA movement against any sort of geoengineering, more so on the right than the left. Republican states are banning this stuff at a pretty consistent level. I think that's been a big, unexpected point for many of us. It comes with the Trump administration's goals of dismantling FEMA. This is the disaster response organization, and it is quite close to fully doing so.
It perhaps gives slightly too much credit that they are preparing for a world of disasters in any way and perhaps genuinely do not see one materiality of the disasters that many of us believe are incoming. But two, just don't quite care and think that the situation will remediate itself. It's quite a cynical view, and it's difficult to read this crystal ball, but I think that is surely a potential here. Going back to the Europe question, I would suggest to our European counterparts, if trying to engage the Trump administration on any of this, one, look solely at the technologies that they care about. Do not mention renewable energy. There is no need. The Trump administration has made that very clear. But perhaps lean in to geothermal. The other story of this is that Europe is home to three out of the five specialized turbine companies that can make geothermal power plants. They're mostly based in Italy with manufacturing in Turkey. The European potential for this is just outstanding. We'll be putting out a report from Carnegie DC, to illustrate just how across Germany, across Romania and Hungary, across Italy, Spain as well, this could be very helpful to the long-term goals of decarbonizing the economy.
With regard to more tactful strategies, I think there is this gut reaction to move to the subnational level. That's what happened last time. States could find sibling states across the Atlantic, and that's important for sure. But it's also the scale of returns from that type of bilateral cooperation are simply less material given fiscal space, given the ability for states to really do policy, especially in this environment. I think there are opportunities on collaboration, capacity sharing, help a labor market. But I think the real opportunity for Europe right now, and I'll end with this, is that during the Biden administration, there was an exceptional acceleration of innovation of some of the technologies that Olivia and I mentioned in the beginning, how to produce cement without carbon emissions in a way that you could just drop this technology into an existing factory. The U.S. has that tech right now. It's scaling up quite well for a lot of these sectors covered in the clean industrial deal. Automotive competitiveness, decarbonizing heavy industry, stabilizing an advanced grid. But the U.S. may not necessarily have a market for those technologies. I think many Americans right now would much rather see joint ventures in Europe than those companies going bust and a one-way tech transfer to China, which is basically what happened in the 2010s.
I think that area of cooperation could do a lot of good for both sides.
Rym Momtaz
I want to jump off of this because if I understand correctly what you're saying, Milo, these American companies that have invested in becoming leaders in technology that helps move forward on the climate transition, are they today in a position where they might be getting less funding because the climate agenda is not as much a priority the Trump administration as it was for the Biden administration? And you think that the Europeans can move in on that and provide an ecosystem? And is that, Olivia, I want to bring you into this, something that you think actually the Europeans can step up to and do well. And do you agree that the geothermal thing is where the EU needs to concentrate right now just to preserve this advantage it has and also preserve this line of communication with the U.S.?
Olivia Lazard
It's a really good question because obviously at the moment, the EU needs to, one, reboot its own economic and industrial capacity, and that requires essentially stimulating demand. So the question is, is there enough demand at home in order to sustain essentially the type of economies and the type of sectors that will lead to supply and to economies of scale? That will essentially position Europe very firmly, not just in the patent world, but also very much in the security of economies of scale. The second aspect which may be related indeed is, can European actors, either in the policy or in the economic space, function with American partners, maybe at the sub-federal level in order to share technologies, in order to also find markets to deploy, to export their technology, and to do so in a way that is essentially going to secure European interests, and at the same time, secure American interests in terms of climate targets, in terms of employment, in terms of, as Milo was very rightly mentioning, the whole issues around trying to decarbonize hard to abate sectors in particular. So on this, I think that Milo pinpointed specific interdependencies or exchanges that can be really interesting.
They're really interesting as well because they're not so much related to two things, which I think is where you should draw the line. The EU should try and avoid cooperation at the moment or importing technologies or having any economic exchange on the basis of technologies that are combining hardware and software. We need to essentially try to steer the EU away from any type of data integration with the US.
Rym Momtaz
You just said the EU has to derisk from the US. Why? What's the risk here? What are they derisking from?
Olivia Lazard
Europe is essentially facing various threats of, I'm going to use the word colonization with a lot of brackets and with a lot of quotes here. Because Europe, and it was mentioned in the Draghi report, and obviously is very well known, does not have its own European technological giants, it relies a lot on the data infrastructure and cloud infrastructure coming from the US, which has its own issues around one critical infrastructure to the way in which data is interpreted or used in a way that creates a black box. We don't necessarily always know. It's the same problem with China, by the way, just to be clear. And at a moment where essentially the fourth industrial revolution, which walks on two legs, decarbonization is one, digitalization is the other. And the fourth industrial revolution will shape essentially the economic norms, as a political means of control, as the formats of political formations as a whole. There is a need essentially for the EU and for Europe in general to try and stand on its own two feet from a digital perspective, from a data perspective, and therefore from normative perspective. So the derisking is essentially both from an American president that clearly is very intent on this America first strategy, potentially at the expense of alliances, but also from the strategy of big tech actors that are very interested in essentially undermining the regulatory power of the EU from a data perspective and a digital perspective.
Rym Momtaz
So you're saying the EU has to not import these technologies? And then there was a second part to what you were saying.
Olivia Lazard
Yeah, it was the critical raw materials question. Anything essentially related to... It's the same logic as with China, but for different reasons to a certain extent. We know that critical minerals are essentially necessary for decarbonization, for digitalization, but also for defense. There's a fundamental need for the EU to reinvest very robustly, normatively, but very robustly, supply chains with partner countries like Norway, like Japan, like Canada, but also countries in Latin America, Africa, Southeast Asia, Central Asia, et cetera, et cetera, to really secure the means of its own industrial base, its own economic security, and its agency within the fourth industrial revolution. When we see the way in which President Trump has been behaving towards Ukraine, where we know essentially that in the backdoor, there were discussions as to whether or not the deal that the US struck with Ukraine should exclude European interests, which, apparently, it did not lend on this particular version of the agreement.
Rym Momtaz
The US-Ukraine rare minerals deal, you mean?
Olivia Lazard
The mineral deal, which was associated or which was floated for some time, which was signed not that long ago, and which guarantees some American access to some of the subsoil resources of Ukraine, including around critical raw materials.
But this is very important because for context as well, in July 2021, the EU had struck its second strategic partnership with Ukraine. The very first one was Canada. The second one was Ukraine. It shows essentially that the EU has looked at Ukraine as one of the key partners of the fourth industrial revolution and how to use essentially supply chains to integrate also more economically with Eastern Europe, including Ukraine. The very simple fact that President Trump floated in some ways discussions about how to potentially exclude European partners from mineral partnerships, shows that there is a very different approach at the moment in the White House.
That's why critical raw materials issues. If the Mineral Security Partnerships remain with the U.S., and that will be discussed on an ongoing basis, it will need essentially to be with a very real amount of caution coming from European partners.
Rym Momtaz
Milo, I want to end with you on this, because if I were to summarize what Olivia was saying, one, the key words are the EU needs to derisk from the U.S., and there is a confrontational trajectory here over securing critical raw materials. It's not a collaborative approach. It's more of an adversarial approach driven by the U.S., but also the EU has to react. I'm not seeing a lot of potential for cooperation here. I'd like to get your final thoughts on that.
Milo McBride
I fully agree that the need to derisk from software and minerals is clear, especially given the amount of leverage that has been amassed from U.S. LNG exports into Europe right now over the past couple of years. For European policymakers, that is a clear priority. To be clear, what I'm offering is not that the Europeans buy zero carbon steel from the Americans. It's that the Europeans look at these companies that are scaling up their first factory. The funding, as of this week, has been canceled from the Trump administration, and they need a market. They need a market with a carbon price, with a long-term commitment to decarbonization. The process I'm offering is something along the lines of technology transfer, technology absorption. I think the geothermal conversation is analogous, where it's not one where if an American drilling company was to help build geothermal power plants in Germany, there would be risks of data privacy or critical mineral leverage. It would be somewhat symbiotic that way. I really try and these few examples as ones where the potential for win-win and minimal leverage or coercion really would exist. Being, of course, sensitive to the predicament that I think Olivia highlighted very well for the dynamics in Brussels and member state capitals.
With regard to minerals, perhaps I would love to end on the note that the Trump administration loves minerals. They are a shiny object du jour, and yet at the same time, it is outlining multiple paradoxes for itself. It is solely focused on mineral extraction and does not understand that the choke point, the capital choke point, the geopolitical choke point is in processing. We've seen a lot of action to permit mining, but we in the United States, do not have the ability to refine and process these materials at the scale that one would hope. Secondly, I think the most interesting paradox is what I've been referring to as the paradox of carbon dominance and killing the Biden era green industrial policy with these mineral goals, where right now, as it would stand, if the Republicans have their way with the Inflation Reduction Act, it will pretty much eliminate all subsidies for electric vehicle batteries and minerals that go into them. That would destroy American demand for these minerals that the administration is trying to cultivate, not just in the U.S., but as Olivia highlighted, through various points of geopolitical leverage in Ukraine, in the DRC, and increasingly with deals with the Saudis and the Gulf.
I come to this point of what is the real end game here? Is it these shiny objects or is it actually scaling up a manufacturing ecosystem and some semblance of mineral security? I think those are important questions to consider going forward.
Rym Momtaz
Great questions to end on, actually. While I have you here, you were mentioning electric vehicles, we're seeing the first frayings politically in the U.S. with this increasingly public rift between President Trump and Elon Musk because of what is being done to the IRA. So certainly a lot more to discuss, and hopefully I can have both of you back on the show very soon to continue on this topic because it will definitely be a central one for all stakeholders, and I think essential for anyone involved in policymaking, whether it's economic policymaking or political policymaking.
So thank you so much, Olivia and Milo, for sharing all of your insights and expertise.
Olivia Lazard
Thanks, you guys.
Milo McBride
Thanks for having me.
Rym Momtaz
Thank you to our listeners for joining us. This is the last episode for the season. We will be back in September 2025.
But in the meantime, for those who are interested in learning more about the clean energy transition, I encourage you to follow the work of Carnegie Europe on X and LinkedIn. Our producer is Mattia Bagherini. Our editor is Futura D'Aprile of Europod, sound editing by Daniel Gutierrez. Sound engineering and original music by Jeremy Bouquet.