Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has highlighted how global dependency on fossil fuels and nuclear energy can create significant geopolitical issues in times of conflict. A bipartisan group of lawmakers in the U.S. has been pressuring the Biden administration to ban imports of Russian oil and rely more on domestic fossil fuels, but the White House is resisting that measure at the moment, arguing that it would unnecessarily raise gas prices for Americans.

At the same time, Russian attacks on nuclear power plants in Ukraine have worried officials, who have major concerns about what could happen if those plants become unstable.

We speak with Jonathan Elkind, a senior research scholar at the Center on Global Energy Policy at Columbia University and a former Assistant Secretary for International Affairs at the Department of Energy, to get some insight into how energy supplies are factoring into Russia’s war.