Year - 2025
Lifetime Achievement for the Advancement of Energy Journalism
Mr. Russell Gold
Writer - TexasMonthly
Russell Gold is an award-winning business and investigative journalist with deep experience covering the U.S. energy industry. From 2021 until 2025, he was a writer at Texas Monthly, where he covered the business of Texas. Prior to that, he was the senior energy reporter at The Wall Street Journal, where he worked from 2000 to 2021.
Throughout his career, Gold has covered a wide range of topics including fracking, oil, renewables, LNG, electricity, batteries, and natural gas. His reporting has influenced a generation of energy executives and policymakers as he documented the reemergence of the U.S. as a global energy powerhouse and exporter. His writing and insights into the role of renewable energy as a complement to other energy sources have been both authoritative and widely followed.
He is the author of two acclaimed books: The Boom (2014), which explores the rise of fracking, and Superpower (2019), which examines the promise and challenges of renewable energy.
Gold’s journalism has earned numerous prestigious honours, including a Peabody Award, two Gerald Loeb Awards, The Deadline Award, the Bartlett & Steele Award, and a Thomas L. Stokes Award. His work has also twice been a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and a finalist for the National Magazine Award.
His reporting on energy for The Wall Street Journal and other publications has helped energy industry executives, government policymakers, and thought leaders understand the profound changes reshaping the U.S. energy landscape. Gold believes that insightful, probing journalism plays a critical role in examining and challenging the long-term assumptions that shape investments and policies.
He maintains that a strong energy industry provides both security and economic vitality — and that achieving this requires thoughtful balancing of industry, climate, community, and government goals. Journalism, he argues, remains essential to this process.