What does it really take to power a “green” future? Where do the minerals inside our phones and electric cars come from—and at what cost? Who bears the burden of the world’s race to decarbonize?
In The Elements of Power, journalist Nicolas Niarchos delivers a deeply reported account of the global scramble for the metals that fuel the energy transition. Tracing supply chains from Central Africa to Beijing and Washington, he reveals how the fight over battery minerals is reshaping geopolitics—and exposing the devastating human consequences of our best intentions.
Nicolas Niarchos will be joined in conversation by journalist Pierre Haski.
About the speakers:
Nicolas Niarchos is a journalist whose work focuses on energy, war, and migration. He is the editor and co-founder of Now Voyager, a new magazine of international affairs. He has been a contributing writer at the New Yorker since 2014, where he initially started as a fact-checker. His reporting has also appeared in the Nation, the New York Times, and the Guardian. In 2023, he won an Edward R. Murrow Award for a radio report from Ukraine produced with the New Yorker and WNYC, and his work on mining in Indonesia was shortlisted for a 2024 Livingston Award. He has testified before Congress on the effects of Congolese battery metal mining. His debut book, The Elements of Power, was published in January 2026. The book traces the global supply chain of lithium-ion batteries from DR Congo to Indonesia to Western Sahara, exposing the human cost of the critical minerals powering our phones, laptops, and electric vehicles.
Pierre Haski has worked as a journalist for over five decades, first at Agence France-Presse and later at the French daily Libération. He was a foreign correspondent posted in Johannesburg, Jerusalem and Beijing. In 2007 he cofounded the news website Rue89.com. He has a daily Geopolitics column on France Inter, France’s number one radio. Since 2017, he’s been President of Reporters sans frontières (RSF), a Paris-based international NGO. In 2026, he launched a YouTube channel on world affairs titled Le monde de Pierre Haski. His latest book, La fin d’un monde, was recently published by Stock.
