Andrew Light is disturbed by the Trump administration’s aggressive approach to locking in new mineral resources in Ukraine.
As the top international affairs official at the Department of Energy under former President Joe Biden, Light was front and center in U.S. efforts to promote global decarbonization, including through the development of minerals that are key to wind, solar, batteries and other clean energy technologies.
Light, in an interview this week with POLITICO’s E&E News, said the Trump administration’s pressure on Ukraine, particularly the initial U.S. proposal to secure 50 percent of the country’s mineral wealth, is “completely irresponsible and frankly cruel, in the midst of an ongoing devastating war that has killed hundreds of thousands of people.”
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is headed to the White House on Friday to sign a new mineral development deal with the U.S., after President Donald Trump in recent days escalated attacks on him, calling him a “dictator.”
