This year, especially over the next few weeks, is shaping up to be a significant one for energy and climate issues.

As world leaders prepare to gather in Glasgow for the COP26 conference to discuss solutions to address climate change and increase global energy access, it is against a backdrop of a global energy crisis that is impacting supply chains across the world and has sent natural gas and gasoline prices skyrocketing.

Many of the innovative ideas and technologies that are on the agenda are being developed by the world’s leading oil and natural gas companies.

Meanwhile in the United States, the CEOs of those companies will be going before the House Oversight Committee for a hearing, not to discuss solutions for the present or future energy mix, but instead for members of Congress to criticize and cast blame.

At the same time a pending reconciliation bill in Congress includes “numerous items that will decimate American oil and natural gas producers,” according to the Independent Petroleum Association of America and others. One measure is a tax on natural gas that would raise American energy bills 12 percent per family annually – a move that the American Gas Association’s Kristen Granier recently explained could be “the difference between buying groceries and paying to heat your home this winter.”

These issues and events will bring together government leaders both in the United States and around the world who must provide practical, sensible solutions to these challenges.

Read the full post and four key questions for the days and weeks ahead on EIDClimate.org.