IEW Q&A: Wood Mackenzie’s Americas Vice Chairman Ed Crooks
Despite being called India Energy Week (IEW), the week-long event thrust conversations about the global energy landscape into the mix.
Ed Crooks is Vice Chairman of Energy Americas at Wood Mackenzie and host of the Energy Gang podcast.
He was the host of the Scaling Renewables and the Advanced Energy Solutions Landscape panel on day two of IEW.
His fellow panellists included:
- Gurdeep Singh, Chairman and MD of NTPC
- Sushil Purohit, CEO of Gentari
- Gaurav Gupta, Additional Chief Secretary at the Department of Energy, Government of Karnataka
- Amit Singh, CEO of Adani Green Energy
- Rahul Munjal, Founder, Chairman and MD of Hero Future Energies
Following the panel, Ed caught up with Energy Digital.
You can read more from Ed in the April edition of Energy Digital here.
Q. The new Trump administration is going to change the energy landscape, not just for the US but globally. What change do you expect to see?
The announcement of tariffs and tariffs being threatened, that’s the most interesting recent development,” he says. “The big question here is to what extent the different objectives of the administration flip with each other. They’re very different, that’s clear.
“The tension arises because the administration is saying ‘we want to reduce the cost of energy, increase production and guarantee security of supply — particularly for AI because AI's a national security ground’. Yet, if you want to put tariffs on steel and on equipment, that raises costs.
“It’s a domino effect that has a cascading effect on the gas industry.”
Q. Has India Energy Week been interesting for you when it comes to gaining more insights into what’s happening in India and globally? How is that going to impact the US and vice versa?
It’s been fascinating. India in particular is so interesting.
It’s also really important in terms of the global economy and the global energy system as well as the global climate.
It's a country on a long-term growth trajectory, it's a country with rapid growth in living standards and an increasing population — therefore there is a significant increase in energy demand and energy consumption.
That, combined with its large size, makes it quite unusual. It also makes it a very important market.
Companies that come here and build relationships are able to do an amazing amount of networking. Even being at India Energy Week and sitting for a while, you see big, global companies making deals
Q. What area(s) of the clean energy industry have piqued your interest most recently and why?
The thing I've been most interested in is biogas and biofuels in terms of clean energy.
There’s a lot of momentum behind biogas and biofuels and it’s probably got a bit of a bad reputation.
It sparks questions about competition between fuel and food — and in India there is a lot of interest in waste-to-fuel pathways.
That's certainly one thing that I'm going to take away from here, the renewed interest in gas biofuels.
There are so many advantages to low carbon fuels as a source of secure supply, and security is a really important point along with energy independence.
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