Vijay V. Vaitheeswaran

Vijay Vaitheeswaran is the Philip D. Reed senior fellow and director of the Energy Security and Climate Change program at the Council on Foreign Relations. Previously, he was a senior editor at the Economist and chairman of major Economist summits held on four continents. His editorial responsibilities ranged from business and finance to technology and innovation. He produced numerous cover stories and hosted the Economist’s special podcast on climate change, To a Lesser Degree. He was named the 2025 Writer of the Year by the American Energy Society. He is also the author of three well-received books and an accomplished public speaker.

As global energy and climate innovation editor, Vaitheeswaran led coverage of the fossil fuel industry and OPEC, power utilities and the nexus of artificial intelligence and energy, and renewables and emerging energy technologies. He specialized in writing about changing business models, novel financing approaches, and breakthrough innovations that challenge legacy industries. He also led coverage of U.S. climate and infrastructure policies and kept a watchful eye on the global “greenlash” and corporate greenwashing. Prior to that, he served as U.S. business editor and led coverage of the most important American business stories. He wrote prominent articles and special reports about the shift toward stakeholder capitalism and how “slobalization” would upend global supply chains. Previously, as China business editor, he opened the magazine’s first Shanghai bureau and covered business, finance, technology, and innovation in the Middle Kingdom. He launched the publication’s first bilingual digital product, Economist Global Business Review. He started his career as a foreign correspondent by opening the first Latin America bureau of the Economist in Mexico City.

Vaitheeswaran is an experienced moderator at convenings ranging from the World Economic Forum annual meeting in Davos to the Aspen Ideas Festival. He is the only journalist ever to chair sessions at CERAWeek, the energy industry’s signature annual gathering in Houston. He is a regular speaker at academic gatherings, having lectured at Harvard, Yale, Stanford, and Columbia. He has served as a visiting fellow at Northwestern University’s Farley Center for Entrepreneurship. He was also an executive in residence and adjunct faculty member at NYU Stern Business School, where he developed and taught its first interdisciplinary course integrating energy, economics, and environment.

He is the author of three prescient books on the future of energy, climate, and innovation. In Power to the People: How the Coming Energy Revolution Will Transform an Industry, Change Our Lives, and Maybe Even Save the Planet (2003), Vaitheeswaran predicted that the coming threat of climate change would spur innovations that would propel the energy industry toward decarbonization, decentralization, and digitization. Harvard’s John Holdren, writing in Scientific American, declared the book to be “by far the most helpful, entertaining, up-to-date, and accessible treatment of the energy-economy-environment problematique available.” His next book, Zoom: The Global Race to Fuel the Car of the Future (2008), coauthored with Iain Carson, predicted the coming divorce of Detroit and Big Oil. It was shortlisted for the McKinsey/Financial Times Business Book of the Year prize and named a Financial Times Book of the Year. His most recent book, Need, Speed and Greed: How the New Rules of Innovation Can Transform Businesses, Propel Nations to Greatness, and Tame the World’s Most Wicked Problems (2012), was declared by Kirkus Reviews to be “a perfect primer for the post-industrial age.” In reviewing it, the Financial Times declared him to be “a writer to whom it is worth paying attention.”

Vaitheeswaran is a life member of the Council on Foreign Relations and the Economic Club of New York, and an expert advisor on energy and innovation to the Global Future Councils of the World Economic Forum. He is an alumnus of Harvard Business School’s General Management Program, where he was elected a class officer and valedictory speaker. He is also an engineering graduate of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he was honored as a Harry S. Truman presidential scholar.