Declaring a new direction in energy policy, the House last night approved $16 billion in taxes on oil companies, while providing billions of dollars in tax breaks and incentives for renewable energy and conservation efforts.
Republican opponents said the legislation ignored the need to produce more domestic oil, natural gas and coal.
The House passed the tax provisions by a vote of 221-189.
Earlier it had approved, 241-172, a companion energy package aimed at boosting energy efficiency and expanding use of biofuels, wind power and other renewable energy sources.
"We are turning to the future," said House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.
The two bills, passed at an unusual Saturday session as lawmakers prepared to leave town for their month-long summer recess, are expected to be merged with legislation the Senate passed in June.
On one of the most contentious and heavily lobbied issues, the House voted to require investor-owned electric utilities nationwide to generate at least 15 percent of their electricity from renewable energy sources such as wind or biofuels.
The utilities and business interests had argued against this, saying it would raise electricity prices in regions of the country that do not have abundant wind energy. But environmentalists said it will spur investments in renewable fuels and help address global warming as utilities use less coal.
Democrats avoided a nasty fight by ignoring - at least for the time being - calls for automakers to make vehicles more fuel-efficient. That, and whether to require large increases in the use of corn-based ethanol as a substitute for gasoline, will be taken up when it's time to merge with the House and Senate bills.
Atlanta Airport Power Outage disrupts Hartsfield-Jackson as an underground fire cripples switchgear redundancy, canceling flights during holiday travel; Georgia Power restores electricity overnight while utility crews probe causes and monitor system resilience.
Key Points
A major Hartsfield-Jackson blackout from an underground fire; power restored as switchgear redundancy is investigated.
✅ Underground fire near Plane Train tunnel damaged switchgear systems
✅ Over 1,100 flights canceled; holiday travel severely disrupted
✅ Georgia Power restored service; redundancy and root cause under review
Power has been restored at the world’s busiest airport after a massive outage Sunday afternoon left planes and passengers stranded for hours, forced airlines to cancel more than 1,100 flights and created a logistical nightmare during the already-busy holiday travel season.
An underground fire caused a complete power outage Sunday afternoon at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport, resulting in thousands of canceled flights at the world's busiest terminal and affecting travelers worldwide.
The massive outage didn’t just leave passengers stranded overnight Sunday, it also affected travelers with flights Monday morning schedules.
According to Paul Bowers, the president and CEO of Georgia Power, “From our standpoint, we apologize for the inconvenience,” he said. The utility restored power to the airport shortly before midnight.
Utility Crews are monitoring the fixes that restored power and investigating what caused the fire and why it was able to damage redundant systems. Bowers said the fire occurred in a tunnel that runs along the path of the underground Plane Train tunnel near Concourse E.
Sixteen highly trained utility personnel worked in the passageway to reconnect the network.“Our investigation is going through the process of what do we do to ensure we have the redundancy going back at the airport, because right now we are a single source feed,” Bowers said.
“We will have that complete by the end of the week, and then we will turn to what caused the failure of the switchgear.”
Though the cause isn’t yet known, he said foul play is not suspected.“There are two things that could happen,” he said.
“There are inner workings of the switchgear that could create the heat that caused the fire, or the splicing going into that switchgear -- that the cable had a failure on that going into the switch gear.”
When asked if age of the system could have been a failure, Bowers said his company conducts regular inspections.“We constantly inspect,” he said. “We inspect on an annual basis to ensure the reliability of the network, and that redundancy is protection for the airport.”Bowers said he is not familiar with any similar fire or outage at the airport.
“The issue for us is to ensure the reliability is here and that it doesn’t happen again and to ensure that our network is resilient enough to withstand any kind of fire,” he said. He added that Georgia Power will seek to determine what can be done in the future to avoid a similar event, such as those experienced during regional outages in other communities.
BC Hydro Rate Freeze delivers immediate relief on electricity rates in British Columbia, reversing a planned 3% hike, as BCUC oversight, a utility review, and Site C project debates shape provincial energy policy.
Key Points
A one-year provincial policy halting BC Hydro electricity rate hikes while a utility review finds cost savings.
✅ Freeze replaces planned 3% hike approved by BCUC.
✅ Government to conduct comprehensive BC Hydro review.
✅ Critics warn $150M revenue loss impacts capital projects.
British Columbia's NDP government has announced it will freeze BC Hydro rates effective immediately, fulfilling a key election promise.
Energy, Mines and Petroleum Resources Minister Michelle Mungall says hydro rates have gone up by more than 24 per cent in the last four years and by more than 70 per cent since 2001, reflecting proposals such as a 3.75% increase over two years announced previously.
"After years of escalating electricity costs, British Columbians deserve a break on their bills," Mungall said in a news release.
BC Hydro had been approved by the B.C. Utilities Commission to increase the rate by three per cent next year, but Mungall said it will pull back its request in order to comply with the freeze.
In the meantime, the government says it will undertake a comprehensive review of the utility meant to identify cost-savings measures for customers often asked to pay an extra $2 a month on electricity bills.
The Liberal critic, Tracy Redies, says the one year rate freeze is going to cost BC Hydro, calling it a distraction from the bigger issue of the future of the Site C project and the oversight of a BC Hydro fund surplus as well.
"A one year rate freeze costs Hydro $150 million," Redies said. "That means there's $150 million less to invest in capital projects and other investments that the utility needs to make."
"This is putting off decisions that should be made today to the future."
Recommendations from the review — including possible new rates — will be implemented starting in April 2019.
California Wildfire Power Shut-Offs escalate as PG&E imposes blackouts amid high winds, Getty and Kincade fires, mass evacuations, Sonoma County threats, and a state of emergency, drawing regulatory scrutiny over grid safety and outage scope.
Key Points
Planned utility outages to curb wildfire risk during extreme winds, prompting evacuations and regulatory scrutiny.
✅ PG&E preemptive blackouts under regulator inquiry
✅ Getty and Kincade fires drive mass evacuations
✅ Sonoma County under threat amid high winds
Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E) already faces an investigation by regulators after cutting supplies to 970,000 homes and businesses amid California blackouts that raised concerns.
It announced that another 650,000 properties would face precautionary shut-offs.
Wildfires fanned by the strong winds are raging in two parts of the state.
Thousands of residents near the wealthy Brentwood neighbourhood of Los Angeles have been told to evacuate because of a wildfire that began early on Monday.
Further north in Sonoma County, a larger fire has forced 180,000 people from their homes.
California's governor has declared a state-wide emergency.
What about the power cuts?
On Monday regulators announced a formal inquiry into whether energy utilities broke rules by pre-emptively cutting power to an estimated 2.5 million people, amid a blackouts policy debate that intensified, as wildfire risks soared.
They did not name any utilities but analysts said PG&E was responsible for the bulk of the "public safety power shut-offs", and later faced a Camp Fire guilty plea that underscored its liabilities.
The company filed for bankruptcy in January after facing hundreds of lawsuits from victims of wildfires in 2017 and 2018.
Of the 970,000 properties hit by the most recent cuts, under half had their services back by Monday, and some sought help through wildfire assistance programs, the Associated Press reported.
Despite criticism that the precautionary blackouts were too widespread and too disruptive, PG&E said more would come on Tuesday and Wednesday because further strong winds were expected.
The company said it had logged more than 20 preliminary reports of damage to its network from the most recent windstorm.
In a video posted to Twitter on Saturday, Governor Gavin Newsom said the power cuts were "infuriating everyone, and rightfully so".
Where are the fires now?
In Los Angeles, the Getty Fire has burned over 600 acres (242 ha) and about 10,000 buildings are in the mandatory evacuation zone.
At least eight homes have been destroyed and five others damaged.
"If you are in an evacuation zone, don't screw around," Mr Schwarzenegger tweeted. "Get out."
LA fire chief Ralph Terrazas said fire crews had been "overwhelmed" by the scale of the fires.
"They had to make some tough decisions on which houses they were able to protect," he said.
"Many times it depends on where the ember lands. I saw homes that were adjacent to homes that were totally destroyed, without any damage."
In northern California, schools remain closed in Sonoma County, where tens of thousands of homes and businesses are under threat.
Sonoma has been ravaged by the Kincade Fire, which started on Wednesday and has burned through 50,000 acres of land, fanned by the winds.
The Kincade Fire began seven minutes after a nearby power line was damaged, and power lines may have started fires according to reports, but PG&E has not yet confirmed if the power glitch started the blaze.
About 180,000 people have been ordered to evacuate, with roads around Santa Rosa north of San Francisco packed with cars as people tried to flee.
There are fears the flames could cross the 101 highway and enter areas that have not seen wildfires since the 1940s.
Electrification Potential Study for Canada evaluates NRCan's decarbonization roadmap, assessing electrification of end uses and replacements for fossil fuels across transportation, buildings, and industry, including propane, diesel, natural gas, and coal, to guide energy policy.
Key Points
An NRCan study assessing electrification to replace fossil fuels across sectors and guide deep decarbonization R&D.
✅ Covers propane, diesel, natural gas, and coal end uses
✅ Guides NRCan R&D priorities for deep decarbonization
The federal government wants to spend up to $300,000 on a study aimed at understanding whether existing electrical technologies can “reduce or eliminate” fossil fuels used for virtually every purpose other than generating electricity.
The proposal has caused consternation within the Saskatchewan government, whose premier has criticized a 2035 net-zero grid target as shifting the goalposts, and which has spent months attacking federal policies it believes will harm the Western Canadian energy sector without meaningfully addressing climate change.
Procurement documents indicate the “Electrification Potential Study for Canada” will provide “strategic guidance on the need to pursue both electric and non-electric energy research and development to enable deep decarbonisation scenarios.”
“It is critical that (Natural Resources Canada) as a whole have a cross-sectoral, consistent, and comprehensive understanding of the viability of electric technologies as a replacement for fossil fuels,” the documents state.
The study proponent will be asked to examine possible replacements for a range of fuels, including propane, transportation fuel, fuel oil, diesel, natural gas and coal, even as Alberta maps a path to clean electricity for its grid. Only international travel fuel and electricity generation are outside the scope of the study.
“To be clear, the consultant should not answer these questions directly, but should conduct the analysis with them in mind. The goal … is to collate data which can be used by (Natural Resources Canada) to conduct analysis related to these questions,” the documents state.
Natural Resources Canada issued the request for proposals one week before Prime Minister Justin Trudeau officially launched a 40-day election campaign in which climate and energy policy, including debates over Alberta's power market like a Calgary retailer's challenge, is expected to play a defining role.
It also comes as the federal government works to complete the controversial Trans Mountain Pipeline Expansion project through British Columbia, amid tariff threats boosting support for Canadian energy projects, which it bought last year for $4.5 billion and is currently bogged down in the court system.
A Natural Resources Canada spokeswoman said the ministry would not be able to respond to questions until sometime on Thursday.
While the documents make clear that the study aims to answer unresolved questions about what the International Energy Agency calls an increasingly-electric future, with clean grid and storage trends emerging, without a specific timeline, the provincial government is far from thrilled.
Energy and Resources Minister Bronwyn Eyre said the document reflects the federal government’s “hostility” to the energy sector, even as Alberta's electricity sector faces profound change, because government ministries like Natural Resources Canada don’t do anything without political direction.
Asked whether a responsible government should consider every option before taking a decision, Eyre said a government that was not interested in eliminating fossil fuels entirely would not have used such “strong” language in a public document, noting that provinces like Ontario are grappling with hydro system problems as well.
“I think it’s a real wake-up call to what (Ottawa’s) endgame really is here,” she said, adding that the document does not ask the proponent to conduct an economic impact analysis or consider potential job losses in the energy sector.
The study is organized by Natural Resources Canada’s office of energy research and development, which is tasked with accelerating energy technology “in order to produce and use energy in … more clean and efficient ways,” the documents state.
Bidding on the proposal closes Oct. 14, one week before the federal election. The successful proponent must deliver a final report in April 2020, according to the documents.
ITER Nuclear Fusion advances tokamak magnetic confinement, heating deuterium-tritium plasma with superconducting magnets, targeting net energy gain, tritium breeding, and steam-turbine power, while complementing laser inertial confinement milestones for grid-scale electricity and 2025 startup goals.
Key Points
ITER Nuclear Fusion is a tokamak project confining D-T plasma with magnets to achieve net energy gain and clean power.
✅ Tokamak magnetic confinement with high-temp superconducting coils
✅ Deuterium-tritium fuel cycle with on-site tritium breeding
✅ Targets net energy gain and grid-scale, low-carbon electricity
It sounds like the stuff of dreams: a virtually limitless source of energy that doesn’t produce greenhouse gases or radioactive waste. That’s the promise of nuclear fusion, often described as the holy grail of clean energy by proponents, which for decades has been nothing more than a fantasy due to insurmountable technical challenges. But things are heating up in what has turned into a race to create what amounts to an artificial sun here on Earth, one that can provide power for our kettles, cars and light bulbs.
Today’s nuclear power plants create electricity through nuclear fission, in which atoms are split, with next-gen nuclear power exploring smaller, cheaper, safer designs that remain distinct from fusion. Nuclear fusion however, involves combining atomic nuclei to release energy. It’s the same reaction that’s taking place at the Sun’s core. But overcoming the natural repulsion between atomic nuclei and maintaining the right conditions for fusion to occur isn’t straightforward. And doing so in a way that produces more energy than the reaction consumes has been beyond the grasp of the finest minds in physics for decades.
But perhaps not for much longer. Some major technical challenges have been overcome in the past few years and governments around the world have been pouring money into fusion power research as part of a broader green industrial revolution under way in several regions. There are also over 20 private ventures in the UK, US, Europe, China and Australia vying to be the first to make fusion energy production a reality.
“People are saying, ‘If it really is the ultimate solution, let’s find out whether it works or not,’” says Dr Tim Luce, head of science and operation at the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER), being built in southeast France. ITER is the biggest throw of the fusion dice yet.
Its $22bn (£15.9bn) build cost is being met by the governments of two-thirds of the world’s population, including the EU, the US, China and Russia, at a time when Europe is losing nuclear power and needs energy, and when it’s fired up in 2025 it’ll be the world’s largest fusion reactor. If it works, ITER will transform fusion power from being the stuff of dreams into a viable energy source.
Constructing a nuclear fusion reactor ITER will be a tokamak reactor – thought to be the best hope for fusion power. Inside a tokamak, a gas, often a hydrogen isotope called deuterium, is subjected to intense heat and pressure, forcing electrons out of the atoms. This creates a plasma – a superheated, ionised gas – that has to be contained by intense magnetic fields.
The containment is vital, as no material on Earth could withstand the intense heat (100,000,000°C and above) that the plasma has to reach so that fusion can begin. It’s close to 10 times the heat at the Sun’s core, and temperatures like that are needed in a tokamak because the gravitational pressure within the Sun can’t be recreated.
When atomic nuclei do start to fuse, vast amounts of energy are released. While the experimental reactors currently in operation release that energy as heat, in a fusion reactor power plant, the heat would be used to produce steam that would drive turbines to generate electricity, even as some envision nuclear beyond electricity for industrial heat and fuels.
Tokamaks aren’t the only fusion reactors being tried. Another type of reactor uses lasers to heat and compress a hydrogen fuel to initiate fusion. In August 2021, one such device at the National Ignition Facility, at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California, generated 1.35 megajoules of energy. This record-breaking figure brings fusion power a step closer to net energy gain, but most hopes are still pinned on tokamak reactors rather than lasers.
In June 2021, China’s Experimental Advanced Superconducting Tokamak (EAST) reactor maintained a plasma for 101 seconds at 120,000,000°C. Before that, the record was 20 seconds. Ultimately, a fusion reactor would need to sustain the plasma indefinitely – or at least for eight-hour ‘pulses’ during periods of peak electricity demand.
A real game-changer for tokamaks has been the magnets used to produce the magnetic field. “We know how to make magnets that generate a very high magnetic field from copper or other kinds of metal, but you would pay a fortune for the electricity. It wouldn’t be a net energy gain from the plant,” says Luce.
One route for nuclear fusion is to use atoms of deuterium and tritium, both isotopes of hydrogen. They fuse under incredible heat and pressure, and the resulting products release energy as heat
The solution is to use high-temperature, superconducting magnets made from superconducting wire, or ‘tape’, that has no electrical resistance. These magnets can create intense magnetic fields and don’t lose energy as heat.
“High temperature superconductivity has been known about for 35 years. But the manufacturing capability to make tape in the lengths that would be required to make a reasonable fusion coil has just recently been developed,” says Luce. One of ITER’s magnets, the central solenoid, will produce a field of 13 tesla – 280,000 times Earth’s magnetic field.
The inner walls of ITER’s vacuum vessel, where the fusion will occur, will be lined with beryllium, a metal that won’t contaminate the plasma much if they touch. At the bottom is the divertor that will keep the temperature inside the reactor under control.
“The heat load on the divertor can be as large as in a rocket nozzle,” says Luce. “Rocket nozzles work because you can get into orbit within minutes and in space it’s really cold.” In a fusion reactor, a divertor would need to withstand this heat indefinitely and at ITER they’ll be testing one made out of tungsten.
Meanwhile, in the US, the National Spherical Torus Experiment – Upgrade (NSTX-U) fusion reactor will be fired up in the autumn of 2022, while efforts in advanced fission such as a mini-reactor design are also progressing. One of its priorities will be to see whether lining the reactor with lithium helps to keep the plasma stable.
Choosing a fuel Instead of just using deuterium as the fusion fuel, ITER will use deuterium mixed with tritium, another hydrogen isotope. The deuterium-tritium blend offers the best chance of getting significantly more power out than is put in. Proponents of fusion power say one reason the technology is safe is that the fuel needs to be constantly fed into the reactor to keep fusion happening, making a runaway reaction impossible.
Deuterium can be extracted from seawater, so there’s a virtually limitless supply of it. But only 20kg of tritium are thought to exist worldwide, so fusion power plants will have to produce it (ITER will develop technology to ‘breed’ tritium). While some radioactive waste will be produced in a fusion plant, it’ll have a lifetime of around 100 years, rather than the thousands of years from fission.
At the time of writing in September, researchers at the Joint European Torus (JET) fusion reactor in Oxfordshire were due to start their deuterium-tritium fusion reactions. “JET will help ITER prepare a choice of machine parameters to optimise the fusion power,” says Dr Joelle Mailloux, one of the scientific programme leaders at JET. These parameters will include finding the best combination of deuterium and tritium, and establishing how the current is increased in the magnets before fusion starts.
The groundwork laid down at JET should accelerate ITER’s efforts to accomplish net energy gain. ITER will produce ‘first plasma’ in December 2025 and be cranked up to full power over the following decade. Its plasma temperature will reach 150,000,000°C and its target is to produce 500 megawatts of fusion power for every 50 megawatts of input heating power.
“If ITER is successful, it’ll eliminate most, if not all, doubts about the science and liberate money for technology development,” says Luce. That technology development will be demonstration fusion power plants that actually produce electricity, where advanced reactors can build on decades of expertise. “ITER is opening the door and saying, yeah, this works – the science is there.”
Renewable Energy Cost Trends highlight IRENA data showing solar and wind undercut coal, as utility-scale projects drive lower levelized electricity costs worldwide, with the Middle East and UAE advancing mega solar parks.
Key Points
They track how solar and wind undercut new fossil fuels as utility-scale costs drop and investment accelerates.
✅ IRENA reports renewables cheapest for new installations
Renewable power projects have undercut traditional coal fuel plants, with solar and wind power costs in particular falling as record-breaking growth continues worldwide.
“Installing new renewables increasingly costs less than the cheapest fossil fuels. With or without the health and economic crisis, dirty coal plants were overdue to be consigned to the past, said Francesco La Camera, director-general of IRENA said in the report.
In 2019, renewables accounted for around 72 percent of all new capacity added worldwide, IRENA said, following a 2016 record year that highlighted the momentum, with lowering costs and technological improvements in solar and wind power helping this dynamic. For solar energy, IRENA notes that the cost for electricity from utility-scale plants fell by 82 percent in the decade between 2010 and 2019, as China's solar PV growth underscored in 2016.
“More than half of the renewable capacity added in 2019 achieved lower electricity costs than new coal, while new solar and wind projects are also undercutting the cheapest and least sustainable of existing coal-fired plants,” Camera added.
Costs for solar and wind power also fell year-on-year by 13 and 9 percent, respectively, with offshore wind costs showing steep declines as well. In 2019, more than half of all newly commissioned utility-scale renewable power plants provided electricity cheaper than the lowest cost of a new fossil fuel plant.
The Middle East
In mid-May, a report by UK-based law firm Ashurst suggested the Middle East is the second most popular region for renewable energy investment after North America, at a time when clean energy investment is outpacing fossil fuels.
The region is home to some of the largest renewable energy bets in the world, with Saudi wind expansion gathering pace. The UAE, for instance, is currently developing the Mohammed Bin Rashid Solar Park, the world’s largest concentrated solar power project in the world.
Around 26 percent of Middle East respondents in Ashurst’s survey said that they were presently investing in energy transition, marking the region as the most popular for current investment in renewables, while 11 percent added that they were considering investing.
In North America, the most popular region, 28 percent said that they were currently investing, with 11 percent stating they are considering investing.
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