April 13, 2012 | By Bill Gates

An Energy Briefing with Daniel Yergin: Market Dynamics & Natural Gas

I’m interested in energy innovation as a way to protect the environment while also supplying the growing energy needs of poor countries so they can continue to develop. To better understand the forces shaping energy markets, I met with Daniel Yergin, a pre-eminent expert on the subject.

If you want to understand the energy markets, Daniel Yergin is the guy you should talk to. I had a chance to meet with him recently when I was at the ECO:nomics conference hosted by the Wall Street Journal.

He’s an impressive guy. Yergin won a Pulitzer for his book The Prize: the Epic Quest for Oil Money and Power and is considered one of the world’s experts on energy markets, particularly oil and gas. He’s the founder of Cambridge Energy Research Associates (CERA) , an energy consulting company specializing in advising governments and private companies on energy markets, geopolitics, industry trends, and strategy.

I’ve recently started reading his new book, The Quest: Energy, Security, and the Remaking of the Modern World. It looks at all the different forms of energy that people are working to develop to meet the world’s growing energy needs. The book analyzes how these different energy sources may affect different countries, their security, and the environment. It’s a very interesting and important book – and quite long at 816 pages. But I’m finding it really fascinating.

This short video is the first of a series from my conversation with Yergin. We’ll be posting the others soon. In this one, Yergin talks about new sources of oil and gas that are making the United States less dependent on imports.