Solar equipment makers to shine in shakeout

COP24 Climate Talks in Poland gather nearly 200 nations to finalize the Paris Agreement rulebook, advance the Talanoa Dialogue, strengthen emissions reporting and transparency, and align finance, technology transfer, and IPCC science for urgent mitigation.

Key Points

UNFCCC summit in Katowice to finalize Paris rules, enhance transparency, and drive stronger emissions cuts.

✅ Paris rulebook on reporting, transparency, markets, and timelines

✅ Talanoa Dialogue to assess gaps and raise ambition by 2020

✅ Finance and tech transfer for developing countries under UNFCCC

Delegates from nearly 200 countries have assembled this month in Katowice, Poland — the heart of coal country — to try to move the ball forward on battling climate change.

It’s now the 24th annual meeting, or “COP” — conference of the parties — under the landmark U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change, which the United States signed under then-President George H.W. Bush in 1992. More significantly, it’s the third such meeting since nations adopted the Paris climate agreement in 2015, widely seen at the time as a landmark moment in which, at last, developed and developing countries would share a path toward cutting greenhouse gas emissions, as Obama's clean energy push sought to lock in momentum.

But the surge of optimism that came with Paris has faded lately. The United States, the second largest greenhouse gas emitter, said it would withdraw from the agreement, though it has not formally done so yet. Many other countries are off target when it comes to meeting their initial round of Paris promises — promises that are widely acknowledged to be too weak to begin with. And emissions have begun to rise after a brief hiatus that had lent some hope of progress.

The latest science, meanwhile, is pointing toward increasingly dire outcomes. The amount of global warming that the world already has seen — 1 degree Celsius, 1.8 degrees Fahrenheit — has upended the Arctic, is killing coral reefs and may have begun to destabilize a massive part of Antarctica. A new report from the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), requested by the countries that assembled in Paris to be timed for this year’s meeting, finds a variety of increasingly severe effects as soon as a rise of 1.5 degrees Celsius arrives — an outcome that can’t be avoided without emissions cuts so steep that they would require societal transformations without any known historical parallel, the panel found.

It’s in this context that countries are meeting in Poland, with expectations and stakes high.

So what’s on the agenda in Poland?

The answer starts with the Paris agreement, which was negotiated three years ago, has been signed by 197 countries and is a mere 27 pages long. It covers a lot, laying out a huge new regime not only for the world as a whole to cut its greenhouse gas emissions, but for each individual country to regularly make new emissions-cutting pledges, strengthen them over time, report emissions to the rest of the world and much more. It also addresses financial obligations that developed countries have to developing countries, including how to achieve clean and universal electricity at scale, and how technologies will be transferred to help that.

But those 27 pages leave open to interpretation many fine points for how it will all work. So in Poland, countries are performing a detailed annotation of the Paris agreement, drafting a “rule book” that will span hundreds of pages.

That may sound bureaucratic, but it’s key to addressing many of the flash points. For instance, it will be hard for countries to trust that their fellow nations are cutting emissions without clear standards for reporting and vetting. Not everybody is ready to accept a process like the one followed in the United States, which not only publishes its emissions totals but also has an independent review of the findings.

“A number of the developing countries are resisting that kind of model for themselves. They see it as an intrusion on their sovereignty,” said Alden Meyer, director of strategy and policy at the Union of Concerned Scientists and one of the many participants in Poland this week. “That’s going to be a pretty tough issue at the end of the day.”

It’s hardly the only one. Also unclear is what countries will do after the time frames on their current emissions-cutting promises are up, which for many is 2025 or 2030. Will all countries then start reporting newer and more ambitious promises every five years? Every 10 years?

That really matters when five years of greenhouse gas emissions — currently about 40 billion tons of carbon dioxide annually — are capable of directly affecting the planet’s temperature.

What can we expect each day?

The conference is in its second week, when higher-level players — basically, the equivalent of cabinet-level leaders in the United States — are in Katowice to advance the negotiations.

As this happens, several big events are on the agenda. On Tuesday and Wednesday is the “Talanoa Dialogue,” which will bring together world leaders in a series of group meetings to discuss these key questions: “Where are we? Where do we want to go? How do we get there?”

Friday is the last day of the conference, but pros know these events tend to run long. On Friday — or after — we will be waiting for an overall statement or decision from the meeting which may signal how much has been achieved.

What is the “Talanoa Dialogue”?

“Talanoa” is a word used in Fiji and in many other Pacific islands to refer to “the sharing of ideas, skills and experience through storytelling.” This is the process that organizers settled on to fulfill a plan formed in Paris in 2015.

That year, along with signing the Paris agreement, nations released a decision that in 2018 there should be a “facilitative dialogue" among the countries “to take stock” of where their efforts stood to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. This was important because going into that Paris meeting, it was already clear that countries' promises were not strong enough to hold global warming below a rise of 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) above preindustrial temperatures.

This dialogue, in the Talanoa process, was meant to prompt reflection and maybe even soul searching about what more would have to be done. Throughout the year, “inputs” to the Talanoa dialogue — most prominently, the recent report by the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change on the meaning and consequences of 1.5 degrees Celsius of warming —have been compiled and synthesized. Now, over two days in Poland, countries' ministers will assemble to share stories in small groups about what is working and what is not and to assess where the world as a whole is on achieving the required greenhouse gas emissions reductions.

What remains to be seen is whether this process will culminate in any kind of product or statement that calls clearly for immediate, strong ramping up of climate change promises across the world.

With the clock ticking, will countries do anything to increase their ambition at this meeting?

If negotiating the Paris rule book sounds disappointingly technical, well, you’re not the only one feeling that way. Pressure is mounting for countries to accomplish something more than that in Poland — to at minimum give a strong signal that they understand that the science is looking worse and worse, and the world’s progress on the global energy transition isn’t matching that outlook.

“The bigger issue is how we’re going to get to an outcome on greater ambition,” said Lou Leonard, senior vice president for climate and energy at the World Wildlife Fund, who is in Poland observing the talks. “And I think the first week was not kind on moving that part of the agenda forward.”

Most countries are not likely to make new emissions-cutting promises this week. But there are two ways that the meeting could give a strong statement that countries should — or will — come up with new promises at least by 2020. That’s when extremely dramatic emissions cuts would have to start, including progress toward net-zero electricity by mid-century, according to the recent report on 1.5 degrees Celsius of warming.

The first is the aforementioned “Talanoa dialogue” (see above). It’s possible that the outcome of the dialogue could be a statement acknowledging that the world isn’t nearly far enough along and calling for much stronger steps.

There will also be a decision text released for the meeting as a whole, which could potentially send a signal. Leonard said he hopes that would include details for the next steps that will put the world on a better course.

“We have to create milestones, and the politics around it that will pressure countries to do something that quite frankly they don’t want to do,” he said. “It’s not going to be easy. That’s why we need a process that will help make it happen. And make the most of the IPCC report that was designed to come out right now so it could do this for us. That’s why we have it, and it needs to serve that role.”

The United States says it will withdraw from the agreement, so what role is it playing in Poland?

Despite President Trump’s pledge to withdraw, the United States remains in the Paris agreement (for now) and has sent a delegation of 44 people to Poland, largely from the State Department but also from the Environmental Protection Agency, Energy Department and even the White House, while domestically a historic U.S. climate law has recently passed to accelerate clean energy. Many of these career government officials remain deeply engaged in hashing out details of the agreement.

Still, the country as a whole is being cast in an antagonistic role in the talks.

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Scotland Wind Energy October saw renewables supply the equivalent of 98 percent of electricity demand, as onshore wind outpaced National Grid needs, cutting emissions and powering households, per WWF Scotland and WeatherEnergy.

Key Points

A monthly update showing Scottish onshore wind met the equivalent of 98% of electricity demand in October.

✅ 98% of monthly electricity demand equivalent met by wind

✅ 16 days exceeded total national demand, per data

✅ WWF Scotland and WeatherEnergy cited; lower emissions

New figures publicized by WWF Scotland have revealed that wind energy generated the equivalent of 98% of the country’s electricity demand in October, or enough electricity to power millions of Scottish homes across the country.

Scotland has regularly been highlighted as a global wind energy leader, and over the last few years has repeatedly reported record-breaking months for wind generation. Now, it’s all very well and good to say that Scottish wind delivered 98% of the country’s electricity demand, but the specifics are a little different — hence why WWF Scotland always refers to it as wind providing “the equivalent of 98%” of Scotland’s electricity demand. That’s why it’s worth looking at the statistics provided by WWF Scotland, sourced from WeatherEnergy, part of the European EnergizAIR project:

• National Grid demand for the month – 1,850,512 MWh
• What % of this could have been provided by wind power across Scotland – 98%
• Best day – 23rd October 2018, generation was 105,900.94 MWh, powering 8.72m homes, 356% of households. Demand that day was 45,274.5MWh – wind generation was 234% of that.
• Worst day – 18th October 2018 when generation was 18,377.71MWh powering 1,512,568 homes, 62% of households. Demand that day was 73,628.5MWh – wind generation was 25%
• How many days generation was over 100% of households – 27
• How many days generation was over 100% of demand – 16

“What a month October proved to be, with wind powering on average 98 per cent of Scotland’s entire electricity demand for the month, at a time when wind became the UK’s main power source and exceeding our total demand for a staggering 16 out of 31 days,” said Dr Sam Gardner, acting director at WWF Scotland.

“These figures clearly show wind is working, it’s helping reduce our emissions and is the lowest cost form of new power generation. It’s also popular, with a recent survey also showing more and more people support turbines in rural areas. That’s why it’s essential that the UK Government unlocks market access for onshore wind at a time when we need to be scaling up electrification of heat and transport.”

Alex Wilcox Brooke, Weather Energy Project Manager at Severn Wye Energy Agency, added: “Octobers figures are a prime example of how reliable & consistent wind production can be, with production on 16 days outstripping national demand.”

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WEC Energy Blooming Grove Investment underscores Midwest renewable energy growth, with Invenergy, GE turbines, and 250 MW wind power capacity, tax credits, PPAs, and utility-scale generation supplying corporate offtakers via long-term contracts.

Key Points

It is WEC Energy's $345M purchase of an 80% stake in Invenergy's 250 MW Blooming Grove wind farm in Illinois.

✅ 94 GE turbines; 250 MW utility-scale wind capacity

✅ Output contracted to two multinational offtakers

✅ Eligible for 100% bonus depreciation and wind tax credits

WEC Energy Group, the parent company of We Energies, is buying an 80% stake in a wind farm, as seen with projects like Enel's 450 MW wind farm coming online, in McLean County, Illinois, for $345 million.

The wind farm, known as the Blooming Grove Wind Farm, is being developed by Invenergy, which recently completed the largest North American wind build with GE partners, a company based in Chicago that develops wind, solar and other power projects. WEC Energy has invested in several wind farms developed by Invenergy.

With the agreement announced Monday, WEC Energy will have invested more than $1.2 billion in wind farms in the Midwest, echoing heartland investment growth across the region. The power from the wind farms is sold to other utilities or companies, as federal initiatives like DOE wind awards continue to support innovation, and the projects are separate from the investments made by WEC Energy's regulated utilities, such as We Energies, in wind power.

The project, which will consist of 94 wind turbines from General Electric, is expected to be completed this year, similar to recent project operations in the sector, and will have a capacity of 250 megawatts, WEC said in a news release.

Affiliates of two undisclosed multinational companies akin to EDF's offshore investment activity have contracted to take all of the wind farm's output.

The investment is expected to be eligible for 100% bonus depreciation and, as wind economics help illustrate key trends, the tax credits available for wind projects, WEC Energy said.

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Manitoba Electrification History charts arc lights, hydroelectric dams, Winnipeg utilities, transmission lines, rural electrification, and Manitoba Hydro to today's wind, solar, and EV transition across the provincial power grid, driving modernization and reliability.

Key Points

Manitoba's power evolution from arc lights to hydro and rural electrification, advancing wind and solar on a modern grid.

✅ 1873 Winnipeg arc light predates Edison and Bell.

✅ 1919 Act built transmission lines, rural electrification.

✅ Hydroelectric dams reshaped lands and affected First Nations.

The first electric light in Manitoba was turned on in Winnipeg in 1873, but it was a century ago this year that the switch was flipped on a decision that would bring power to the fingertips of people across the province.

On March 12, 1873, Robert Davis — who owned the Davis House hotel on Main Street, about a block from Portage Avenue — used an electric arc light to illuminate the front of his building, according to A History of Electric Power in Manitoba, published by Manitoba Hydro.

That type of light used an an inert gas in a glass container to create an electric arc between two metal electrodes.

"The lamp in front of the Davis Hotel is quite an institution," a Manitoba Free Press report from the day said. "It looks well and guides the weary traveller to a haven of rest, billiards and hot drinks."

A ladder crew from the Winnipeg Electric Street Railway Company working on an electric trolley line in 1905. (I.F. Allen/Manitoba Hydro archives)

The event took place six years before Thomas Edison's first incandescent lamp was invented and three years before the first complete sentence was spoken over the telephone by Alexander Graham Bell.

"Electrification probably had a bigger influence on the lives of Manitobans than virtually anything else," said Gordon Goldsborough, head researcher with the Manitoba Historical Society.

"It's one of the most significant changes in the lives of Manitobans ever, because basically it transformed so many aspects of their lives. It wasn't just one thing — it touched pretty much every aspect of life."

Winnipeg gets its 1st street lamps

In the pioneer days of lighting and street railway transportation in Winnipeg, multiple companies formed in an effort to take advantage of the new utility: Winnipeg Gas Company, Winnipeg General Power Company, Manitoba Electric and Gas Light Company, and The North West Electric Light and Power Company.

In October 1882, the first four street lamps, using electric arc lights, were turned on along Main Street from Broadway to the CPR crossing over the Assiniboine River.

They were installed privately by P.V. Carroll, who came from New York to establish the Manitoba Electric Light & Power Company and try to win a contract for illuminating the rest of the city's streets.

He didn't get it. Newspaper reports from the time noted many outages and other problems and general disappointment in the quality of the light.

Instead, the North West Electric Light and Power Company won that contract and in June 1883 it lit up the streets.

Workers erect a wooden hydro pole beside the Belmont Hotel in 1936. Belmont is a small community southeast of Brandon. (Manitoba Hydro archives)

Over the years, other companies would bring power to the city as it became more reliable, including the Winnipeg Electric Street Railway Company (WERCo), which built the streetcar system and sold electric heat, light and power.

But it was the Brandon Electric Light Company that first tapped into a new source of power — hydro. In 1900, a dam was built across the Minnedosa River (now known as the Little Saskatchewan River) in western Manitoba, and the province's first hydroelectric generating station was created.

The first transmission line was also built, connecting the station with Brandon.

By 1906, WERCo had taken over the Winnipeg General Power Company and the Manitoba Electric and Gas Light Company, and changed its name to the Winnipeg Electric Railway Company. Later, it became the Winnipeg Electric Company, or WECo.

It also took a cue from Brandon, building a hydroelectric plant to provide more power. The Pinawa dam site operated until 1951 and is now a provincial park.

The Minnedosa River plant was the first hydroelectric generating station in Manitoba. (Manitoba Hydro archives)

The City of Winnipeg Hydroelectric System was also formed in 1906 as a public utility to combat the growing power monopoly held by WECo, and to get cheaper power. The city had been buying its supply from the private company "and the City of Winnipeg didn't quite like that price," said Bruce Owen, spokesman for Manitoba Hydro.

So the city funded and built its own dam and generating station site on the Winnipeg River in Pointe du Bois — about 125 kilometres northeast of Winnipeg — which is still in operation today.

"All of a sudden, not only did we have street lights … businesses had lights, power was supplied to homes, people no longer had to cook on wood stoves or walk around with kerosene lanterns. This city took off," said Owen.

"It helped industry grow in the city of Winnipeg. Within a few short years, a second plant had to be built, at Slave Falls."

Lighting up rural Manitoba

While the province's two biggest cities enjoyed the luxury of electricity and the conveniences it brought, the patchwork of power suppliers had also created a jumble of contracts with differing rates and terms, spurring periodic calls for a western Canadian electricity grid to improve coordination.

Meanwhile, most of rural Manitoba remained in the dark.

The Pinawa Dam was built by the Winnipeg Electric Street Railway Company in 1906 and operated until 1951. (Manitoba Hydro archives)

The Pinawa Dam site now, looking like some old Roman ruins. (Darren Bernhardt/CBC)

That began to change in 1919 when the Manitoba government passed the Electric Power Transmission Act, with the aim of supplying rural Manitoba with electrical power. The act enabled the construction of transmission lines to carry electricity from the Winnipeg River generating stations to communities all over southern Manitoba.

It also created the Manitoba Power Commission, predecessor to today's Manitoba Hydro, to purchase power from the City of Winnipeg — and later WECo — to supply to those other communities.

The first transmission line, a 97-kilometre link between Winnipeg and Portage la Prairie, opened in late 1919, and modern interprovincial projects like Manitoba-Saskatchewan power line funding continue that legacy today. The power came from Pointe du Bois to a Winnipeg converter station that still stands at the corner of Stafford Street and Scotland Avenue, then went on to Portage la Prairie.

"That's the remarkable thing that started in 1919," said Goldsborough.

Every year after that, the list of towns connected to the power grid became longer "and gradually, over the early 20th century, the province became electrified," Goldsborough said.

"You'd see these maps that would spider out across the province showing the [lines] that connected each of these communities — a precursor to ideas like macrogrids — to each other, and it was really quite remarkable."

By 1928, 33 towns were connected to the Manitoba Power Commission grid. That rose to 44 by 1930 and 140 by 1939, according to the Manitoba Historical Society.

Power on the farm

Still, one group who could greatly use electricity for their operations — farmers — were still using lanterns, steam and coal for light, heat and power.

"The power that came to the [nearest] town didn't extend to them," said Goldsborough.

It was during the Second World War, as manual labour was hard to come by on farms, that the Manitoba Power Commission recognized the gap in its grid.

It met with farmers to explain the benefits electricity could bring and surveyed their interest. When the war ended in 1945, the farm electrification process got underway.

Employees, their spouses, and children pose for a photo outside of Great Falls generating station in 1923. (Manitoba Hydro archives)

Farmers were taught wiring techniques and about the use of motors for farm equipment, as well as about electric appliances and other devices to ease the burden of domestic life.

"The electrification of the 1940s and '50s absolutely revolutionized rural life," said Goldsborough.

"Farmers had to provide water for all those animals and in a lot of cases [prior to electrification] they would just use a hand pump, or sometimes they'd have a windmill. But these were devices that weren't especially reliable and they weren't high capacity."

Electric motors changed everything, from pumping water to handling grain, while electric heat provided comfort to both people and animals.

Workers build a hydro transmission line tower in an undated photo from Manitoba Hydro. (Manitoba Hydro archives)

"Now you could have heat lamps for your baby chickens. They would lose a lot of chickens normally, because they would simply be too cold," Goldsborough said.

Keeping things warm was important, but so too was refrigeration. In addition to being able to store meat in summer, it was "something to prolong the life of dairy products, eggs, anything," said Manitoba Hydro's Owen.

"It's all the things we take for granted — a flick of a switch to turn the lights on instead of walking around with a lantern, being able to have maybe a bit longer day to do routine work because you have light."

Agriculture was the backbone of the province but it was limited without electricity, said Owen.

Connecting it to the grid "brought it into the modern age and truly kick-started it to make it a viable part of our economy," he said. "And we still see that today."

In 1954, when the farm electrification program ended, Manitoba was the most wired of the western provinces, with 75 per cent of farms and 100,000 customers connected.

The success of the farm electrification program, combined with the post-war boom, brought new challenges, as the existing power generation could not support the new demand.

The three largest players — City Hydro, WECo and the Manitoba Power Commission, along with the provincial government  — created the Manitoba Hydro-Electric Board in 1949 to co-ordinate generation and distribution of power.

A float in a Second World War victory parade represents a hydroelectric dam and the electricity it generates to power cities. (Manitoba Hydro archives)

More hydroelectric generating stations were built and more reorganizations took place. WECo was absorbed by the board and its assets split into separate companies — Greater Winnipeg Gas and Greater Winnipeg Transit.

Its electricity distribution properties were sold to City Hydro, which became the sole distributor in central Winnipeg. The Manitoba Power Commission became sole distributor of electricity in the suburbs and the rest of Manitoba.

Impacts on First Nations

Even as the lives of many people in the province were made easier by the supply of electricity, many others suffered from negative impacts in the rush of progress.

Many First Nations were displaced by hydro dams, which flooded their ancestral lands and destroyed their traditional ways of life.

"And we hear stories about the potential abuses that occurred," said Goldsborough. "So you know, there are there pluses but there are definitely minuses."

In the late 1950s, the Manitoba Power Commission continued to grow and expand its reach, this time moving into the north by buying up private utilities in The Pas and Cranberry Portage.

In 1961, the provincial government merged the commission with the Manitoba Hydro-Electric Board to create Manitoba Hydro.

In 1973, 100 years after the first light went on at that Main Street hotel, the last of the independent power utilities in the province — the Northern Manitoba Power Company Ltd. — was taken over by Hydro.

Winnipeg Hydro, previously called City Hydro, joined the fold in 2002.

Today, Manitoba Hydro operates 15 generating stations and serves 580,262 electric power customers in the province, as well as 281,990 natural gas customers.

New era

And now, as happened in 1919, a new era in electricity distribution is emerging as alternative sources of power — wind and solar — grow in popularity, and as communities like Fort Frances explore integrated microgrids for resilience.

"There's a bit of a clean energy shift happening," said Owen, adding use of biomass energy — energy production from plant or animal material — is also expanding.

"And there's a technological change going on and that's the electrification of vehicles. There are only really several hundred [electric vehicles] in Manitoba on the streets right now. But we know at some point, with affordability and reliability, there'll be a switch over and the gas-powered internal combustion engine will start to disappear."

'We're just a little behind here': Manitoba electric vehicle owners call for more charging stations

That means electrical utilities around the world are re-examining their capabilities, as climate change increasingly stresses grids, said Owen.

"It's coming [and we need to know], are we in a position to meet it? What will be the demands on the system on a path to a net-zero grid by 2050 nationwide?" he said.

"It may not come in my lifetime, but it is coming."

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U.S. Grid Modernization is critical for renewable energy integration, EV adoption, climate resilience, and reliability, requiring transmission upgrades, inter-regional links, hardened substations, and smart grid investments to handle extreme weather and decarbonization targets.

Key Points

U.S. Grid Modernization upgrades power networks to improve reliability, integrate renewables, and support EV demand.

✅ $2T+ investment needed for transmission upgrades

✅ Extreme weather doubling outages since 2017

✅ Regulatory fragmentation slows inter-regional lines

After decades of struggle, the U.S. clean-energy business is booming, with soaring electric-car sales and fast growth in wind and solar power. That’s raising hopes for the fight against climate change.

All this progress, however, could be derailed, as the green revolution stalls without a massive overhaul of America’s antiquated electric infrastructure – a task some industry experts say requires more than $2 trillion. The current network of transmission wires, substations and transformers is decaying with age and underinvestment, a condition highlighted by catastrophic failures during increasingly frequent and severe weather events.

Power outages over the last six years have more than doubled in number compared to the previous six years, according to a Reuters examination of federal data. In the past two years, power systems have collapsed in Gulf Coast hurricanes, West Coast wildfires, Midwest heat waves and a Texas deep freeze and recurring Texas grid crisis risks, causing long and sometimes deadly outages.

Compounding the problem, the seven regional grid operators in the United States are underestimating the growing threat of severe weather caused by climate change, Reuters found in a review of more than 10,000 pages of regulatory documents and operators’ public disclosures. Their risk models, used to guide transmission-network investments, consider historical weather patterns extending as far back as the 1970s. None account for scientific research documenting today’s more extreme weather and how it can disrupt grid generation, transmission and fuel supplies simultaneously.

The decrepit power infrastructure of the world’s largest economy is among the biggest obstacles to expanding clean energy and combating climate change on the ambitious schedule laid out by U.S. President Joe Biden. His administration promises to eliminate or offset carbon emissions from the power sector by 2035 and from the entire U.S. economy by 2050. Such rapid clean-energy growth would pressure the nation’s grid in two ways: Widespread EV adoption will spark a huge surge in power demand; and increasing dependence on renewable power creates reliability problems on days with less sun or wind, as seen in Texas, where experts have outlined reliability improvements that address these challenges.

The U.S. transmission network has seen outages double in recent years amid more frequent and severe weather events, driven by climate change and a utility supply-chain crunch that slows critical repairs. The system needs a massive upgrade to handle expected growth in clean energy and electric cars. 

“Competition from renewables is being strangled without adequate and necessary upgrades to the transmission network,” said Simon Mahan, executive director of the Southern Renewable Energy Association, which represents solar and wind companies.

The federal government, however, lacks the authority to push through the massive grid expansion and modernization needed to withstand wilder weather and accommodate EVs and renewable power. Under the current regulatory regime, and amid contentious electricity pricing proposals in recent years, the needed infrastructure investments are instead controlled by a Byzantine web of local, state and regional regulators who have strong political incentives to hold down spending, according to Reuters interviews with grid operators, federal and state regulators, and executives from utilities and construction firms.

“Competition from renewables is being strangled without adequate and necessary upgrades to the transmission network.”

Paying for major grid upgrades would require these regulators to sign off on rate increases likely to spark strong opposition from consumers and local and state politicians, who are keen to keep utility bills low. In addition, utility companies often fight investments in transmission-network improvements because they can result in new connections to other regional grids that could allow rival companies to compete on their turf, even as coal and nuclear disruptions raise brownout risks in some regions. With the advance of green energy, those inter-regional connections will become ever more essential to move power from far-flung solar and wind installations to population centers.

The power-sharing among states and regions with often conflicting interests makes it extremely challenging to coordinate any national strategy to modernize the grid, said Alison Silverstein, an independent industry consultant and former senior adviser to the U.S. Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC).

“The politics are a freakin’ nightmare,” she said.

The FERC declined to comment for this story. FERC Commissioner Mark Christie, a Republican, acknowledged the limitations of the agency’s power over the U.S. grid in an April 21 agency meeting involving transmission planning and costs.

“We can’t force states to do anything,” Christie said.

The White House and Energy Department did not comment in response to detailed questions from Reuters on the Biden administration’s plans to tackle U.S. grid problems and their impact on green-energy expansion.

The administration said in an April news release that it plans to offer $2.5 billion in grants for grid-modernization projects as part of Biden’s $1 trillion infrastructure package, complementing a proposed clean electricity standard to accelerate decarbonization over the next decade. A modernized grid, the release said, is the “linchpin” of Biden’s clean-energy agenda.

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Global Power Sector CO2 Surge 2021 shows electricity demand outpacing renewable energy, with coal and fossil fuels rebounding, undermining green recovery goals and climate change targets flagged by the IEA and IPCC.

Key Points

Record rise in power sector CO2 in 2021 as demand outpaced renewables and coal rebounded, undermining a green recovery.

✅ Electricity demand rose 5% above pre-pandemic levels

✅ Fossil fuels supplied 61% of power; coal led the rebound

✅ Wind and solar grew 15% but lagged demand

Carbon dioxide emissions from the global electric power sector surged past pre-pandemic levels to record highs in the first half of 2021, according to new research by London-based environmental think tank Ember.

Electricity demand and emissions are now 5% higher than where they were before the Covid-19 outbreak, which prompted worldwide lockdowns that led to a temporary drop in global greenhouse gas emissions. Electricity demand also surpassed the growth of renewable energy, and surging electricity demand is putting power systems under strain, the analysis found.

The findings signal a failure of countries to achieve a so-called “green recovery” that would entail shifting away from fossil fuels toward renewable energy, though European responses to Covid-19 have accelerated the electricity system transition by about a decade, to avoid the worst consequences of climate change.

The report found that 61% of the world’s electricity still came from fossil fuels in 2020. Five G-20 countries had more than 75% of their electricity supplied from fossil fuels last year, with Saudi Arabia at 100%, South Africa at 89%, Indonesia at 83%, Mexico at 75% and Australia at 75%.

Coal generation did fall a record 4% in 2020, but overall coal supplied 43% of the additional energy demand between 2019 and 2020, with soaring electricity and coal use underscoring persistent demand pressures. Asia currently generates 77% of the world’s coal electricity and China alone generates 53%, up from 44% in 2015.

The world’s transition out of coal power, which contributes to roughly 30% of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions, is happening far too slowly to avoid the worst impacts of climate change, the study warned. And the International Energy Agency forecasts coal generation will rebound in 2021 as electricity demand picks up again, even as renewables are poised to eclipse coal by 2025 according to other analyses.

“Progress is nowhere near fast enough. Despite coal’s record drop during the pandemic, it still fell short of what is needed,” Ember lead analyst Dave Jones said in a statement.

Jones said coal power usage must collapse by 80% by the end of the decade to avoid dangerous levels of global warming above 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit).

“We need to build enough clean electricity to simultaneously replace coal and electrify the global economy,” Jones said. “World leaders have yet to wake up to the enormity of the challenge.”

The findings come ahead of a major U.N. climate conference in Glasgow, Scotland, in November, where negotiators will push for more ambitious climate action and emissions reduction pledges from nations.

Without immediate, rapid and large-scale reductions to global emissions, scientists of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change warn that the average global temperature will likely cross the 1.5 degrees Celsius threshold within 20 years.

The study also highlighted some upsides. Wind and solar generation, for instance, rose by 15% in 2020, and low-emissions sources are set to cover almost all the growth in global electricity demand in the next three years, producing nearly a tenth of the world’s electricity last year and doubling production since 2015.

Some countries now get about 10% of their electricity from wind and solar, including India, China, Japan, Brazil. The U.S. and Europe have experienced the biggest growth in wind and solar, and in the EU, wind and solar generated more electricity than gas last year, with Germany at 33% and the U.K. leads the G20 for wind power at 29%.

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