Regulatory obstacles to smart grids prevent reliable power

Quebec EV transition plan aims for 2 million electric vehicles by 2030 and bans new gas cars by 2035, stressing charging infrastructure, incentives, emissions cuts, and industry impacts, with debate over feasibility and economic risks.

Key Points

A provincial policy targeting 2M EVs by 2030 and a 2035 gas-car sales ban, backed by charging buildout and incentives.

✅ Requires major charging infrastructure and grid upgrades

✅ Balances incentives with economic impacts and industry readiness

✅ Gas stations persist while EV adoption accelerates cautiously

Quebec's ambitious push to dominate the electric vehicle (EV) market, echoing Canada's EV goals in its plan, by setting a target of two million EVs on the road by 2030 and planning to ban the sale of new gas-powered vehicles by 2035 has sparked significant debate among industry experts. While the government's objectives aim to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and promote sustainable transportation, some experts question the feasibility and potential economic impacts of such rapid transitions.

Current Landscape of Gas Stations in Quebec

Contrary to Environment Minister Benoit Charette's assertion that gas stations may become scarce within the next decade, industry experts suggest that the number of gas stations in Quebec is unlikely to decline drastically. Carol Montreuil, Vice President of the Canadian Fuels Association, describes the minister's statement as "wishful thinking," emphasizing that the number of gas stations has remained relatively stable over the past decade. Statistics indicate that in 2023, Quebec residents purchased more gasoline than ever before, and EV shortages and wait times further underscore the continued demand for traditional fuel sources.

Challenges in Accelerating EV Adoption

The government's goal of having two million EVs on Quebec roads by 2030 presents several challenges. Currently, there are approximately 200,000 fully electric cars in the province. Achieving a tenfold increase in less than a decade requires substantial investments in charging infrastructure, consumer incentives, and public education to address concerns such as range anxiety and charging accessibility, especially amid electricity shortage warnings across Quebec and other provinces.

Economic Considerations and Industry Concerns

Industry stakeholders express concerns about the economic implications of rapidly phasing out gas-powered vehicles. Montreuil warns that the industry is already struggling and that attempting to transition too quickly could lead to economic challenges, a view echoed by critics who label the 2035 EV mandate delusional. He suggests that the government may be spending excessive public funds on subsidies for technologies that are still expensive and not yet widely adopted.

Public Sentiment and Adoption Rates

Public sentiment towards EVs is mixed, and experiences in Manitoba suggest the road to targets is not smooth. While some consumers, like Montreal resident Alex Rajabi, have made the switch to electric vehicles and are satisfied with their decision, others remain hesitant due to concerns about vehicle cost, charging infrastructure, and the availability of incentives. Rajabi, who transitioned to an EV nine months ago, notes that while he did not take advantage of the incentive program, he is happy with his decision and suggests that adding charging ports at gas stations could facilitate the transition.

The Need for a Balanced Approach

Experts advocate for a balanced approach that considers the pace of technological advancements, consumer readiness, and economic impacts. While the transition to electric vehicles is essential for environmental sustainability, it is crucial to ensure that the infrastructure, market conditions, and public acceptance are adequately addressed, and to recognize that a share of Canada's electricity still comes from fossil fuels, to make the shift both feasible and beneficial for all stakeholders.

In summary, Quebec's ambitious EV targets reflect a strong commitment to environmental sustainability. However, industry experts caution that achieving these goals requires careful planning, substantial investment, and a realistic assessment of the challenges involved as federal EV sales regulations take shape, in transitioning from traditional vehicles to electric mobility.

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High-Temperature Superconducting Cables enable lossless, high-voltage, underground transmission for grid modernization, linking renewable energy to cities with liquid nitrogen cooling, boosting efficiency, cutting emissions, reducing land use, and improving resilience against disasters and extreme weather.

Key Points

Liquid-nitrogen-cooled power cables delivering electricity with near-zero losses, lower voltage, and greater resilience.

✅ Near-lossless transmission links renewables to cities efficiently

✅ Operate at lower voltage, reducing substation size and cost

✅ Underground, compact, and resilient to extreme weather events

For most of us, transmitting power is an invisible part of modern life. You flick the switch and the light goes on.

But the way we transport electricity is vital. For us to quit fossil fuels, we will need a better grid, with macrogrid planning connecting renewable energy in the regions with cities.

Electricity grids are big, complex systems. Building new high-voltage transmission lines often spurs backlash from communities, as seen in Hydro-Que9bec power line opposition over aesthetics and land use, worried about the visual impact of the towers. And our 20th century grid loses around 10% of the power generated as heat.

One solution? Use superconducting cables for key sections of the grid. A single 17-centimeter cable can carry the entire output of several nuclear plants. Cities and regions around the world have done this to cut emissions, increase efficiency, protect key infrastructure against disasters and run powerlines underground. As Australia prepares to modernize its grid, it should follow suit with smarter electricity infrastructure initiatives seen elsewhere. It's a once-in-a-generation opportunity.

What's wrong with our tried-and-true technology?
Plenty.

The main advantage of high voltage transmission lines is they're relatively cheap.

But cheap to build comes with hidden costs later. A survey of 140 countries found the electricity currently wasted in transmission accounts for a staggering half-billion tons of carbon dioxide—each year.

These unnecessary emissions are higher than the exhaust from all the world's trucks, or from all the methane burned off at oil rigs.

Inefficient power transmission also means countries have to build extra power plants to compensate for losses on the grid.

Labor has pledged A$20 billion to make the grid ready for clean energy, and international moves such as US-Canada cross-border approvals show the scale of ambition needed. This includes an extra 10,000 kilometers of transmission lines. But what type of lines? At present, the plans are for the conventional high voltage overhead cables you see dotting the countryside.

System planning by Australia's energy market operator shows many grid-modernizing projects will use last century's technologies, the conventional high voltage overhead cables, even as Europe's HVDC expansion gathers pace across its network. If these plans proceed without considering superconductors, it will be a huge missed opportunity.

How could superconducting cables help?
Superconduction is where electrons can flow without resistance or loss. Built into power cables, it holds out the promise of lossless electricity transfer, over both long and short distances. That's important, given Australia's remarkable wind and solar resources are often located far from energy users in the cities.

High voltage superconducting cables would allow us to deliver power with minimal losses from heat or electrical resistance and with footprints at least 100 times smaller than a conventional copper cable for the same power output.

And they are far more resilient to disasters and extreme weather, as they are located underground.

Even more important, a typical superconducting cable can deliver the same or greater power at a much lower voltage than a conventional transmission cable. That means the space needed for transformers and grid connections falls from the size of a large gym to only a double garage.

Bringing these technologies into our power grid offers social, environmental, commercial and efficiency dividends.

Unfortunately, while superconductors are commonplace in Australia's medical community (where they are routinely used in MRI machines and diagnostic instruments) they have not yet found their home in our power sector.

One reason is that superconductors must be cooled to work. But rapid progress in cryogenics means you no longer have to lower their temperature almost to absolute zero (-273℃). Modern "high temperature" superconductors only need to be cooled to -200℃, which can be done with liquid nitrogen—a cheap, readily available substance.

Overseas, however, they are proving themselves daily. Perhaps the most well-known example to date is in Germany's city of Essen. In 2014, engineers installed a 10 kilovolt (kV) superconducting cable in the dense city center. Even though it was only one kilometer long, it avoided the higher cost of building a third substation in an area where there was very limited space for infrastructure. Essen's cable is unobtrusive in a meter-wide easement and only 70cm below ground.

Superconducting cables can be laid underground with a minimal footprint and cost-effectively. They need vastly less land.

A conventional high voltage overhead cable requires an easement of about 130 meters wide, with pylons up to 80 meters high to allow for safety. By contrast, an underground superconducting cable would take up an easement of six meters wide, and up to 2 meters deep.

This has another benefit: overcoming community skepticism. At present, many locals are concerned about the vulnerability of high voltage overhead cables in bushfire-prone and environmentally sensitive regions, as well as the visual impact of the large towers and lines. Communities and farmers in some regions are vocally against plans for new 85-meter high towers and power lines running through or near their land.

Climate extremes, unprecedented windstorms, excessive rainfall and lightning strikes can disrupt power supply networks, as the Victorian town of Moorabool discovered in 2021.

What about cost? This is hard to pin down, as it depends on the scale, nature and complexity of the task. But consider this—the Essen cable cost around $20m in 2014. Replacing the six 500kV towers destroyed by windstorms near Moorabool in January 2020 cost $26 million.

While superconducting cables will cost more up front, you save by avoiding large easements, requiring fewer substations (as the power is at a lower voltage), and streamlining approvals.

Where would superconductors have most effect?
Queensland. The sunshine state is planning four new high-voltage transmission projects, to be built by the mid-2030s. The goal is to link clean energy production in the north of the state with the population centers of the south, similar to sending Canadian hydropower to New York to meet demand.

Right now, there are major congestion issues between southern and central Queensland, and subsea links like Scotland-England renewable corridors highlight how to move power at scale. Strategically locating superconducting cables here would be the best location, serving to future-proof infrastructure, reduce emissions and avoid power loss.

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UK Future System Operator to replace National Grid as ESO, enabling smart grid reform, impartial system planning, vehicle-to-grid, long duration storage, and data-driven oversight to meet net zero and cut consumer energy costs.

Key Points

The UK Future System Operator is an independent ESO and planner, steering net zero with impartial data and smart grid coordination.

✅ Replaces National Grid ESO with independent system operator

✅ Enables smart grid, vehicle-to-grid, and long-duration storage

✅ Supports net zero, lower bills, and impartial system planning

The government plans to strip National Grid of its role keeping Great Britain’s lights on as part of a proposed “revolution’” in the electricity network driven by smart digital grid technologies.

The FTSE 100 company has played a role in managing the energy system of England, Scotland and Wales, including efforts such as a subsea power link that brings renewable power from Scotland to England (Northern Ireland has its own network). It is the electricity system operator, balancing supply and demand to ensure the electricity supply. But it will lose its place at the heart of the industry after government officials put forward plans to replace it with an independent “future system operator”.

The new system controller would help steer the country towards its climate targets, at the lowest cost to energy bill payers, by providing impartial data and advice after an overhaul of the rules governing the energy system to make it “fit for the future”.

The plans are part of a string of new proposals to help connect millions of electric cars, smart appliances and other green technologies to the energy system, and to fast-track grid connections nationwide, which government officials believe could help to save £10bn a year by 2050, and create up to 10,000 jobs for electricians, data scientists and engineers.

The new regulations aim to make it easier for electric cars to export electricity from their batteries back on to the power grid or to homes when needed. They could also help large-scale and long-duration batteries play a role in storing renewable energy, supported by infrastructure such as a 2GW substation helping integrate supply, so that it is available when solar and wind power generation levels are low.

Anne-Marie Trevelyan, the energy and climate change minister, said the rules would allow households to “take control of their energy use and save money” while helping to make sure there is clean electricity available “when and where it’s needed”.

She added: “We need to ensure our energy system can cope with the demands of the future. Smart technologies will help us to tackle climate change while making sure that the lights stay on and bills stay low.”

The energy regulator, Ofgem, raised concerns earlier this year that National Grid would face a “conflict of interest” in providing advice on the future electricity system because it also owns energy networks that stand to benefit financially from future investment plans. It called for a new independent operator to take its place.

Jonathan Brearley, Ofgem’s chief executive, said the UK requires a “revolution” in how and when it uses electricity, including demand shifts during self-isolation to help meet its climate targets and added that the government’s plans for a new digital energy system were “essential” to meeting this goal “while keeping energy bills affordable for everyone”.

A National Grid spokesperson said the company would “work closely” with the government and Ofgem on the role of a future system operator, as well as “the most appropriate ownership model and any future related sale”.

The division has earned National Grid, which has addressed cybersecurity fears in supplier choices, an average of £199m a year over the last five years, or 1.3% of the group’s total revenues, which are split between the UK – where it operates high-voltage transmission lines in England and Wales, and the country’s gas system – and its growing energy supply business in the US, aligned with investment in a smarter electricity infrastructure in the US to modernize grids.

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Texas PUC Appointments signal post-storm reform as Gov. Greg Abbott taps Peter Lake and advances Will McAdams for Senate confirmation, affecting ERCOT oversight, grid reliability, wholesale power pricing, and securitization for co-ops.

Key Points

Texas PUC appointments add Peter Lake and Will McAdams to steer ERCOT, grid reliability, and market policy.

✅ Peter Lake nominated chair to replace Arthur D'Andrea.

✅ Will McAdams advances toward Senate confirmation.

✅ Focus on ERCOT oversight, price cap debate, grid resilience.

A new set of Texas electricity regulators began to take shape Monday, as Gov. Greg Abbott nominated a finance expert to be the next chairman of the Public Utility Commission while his earlier choice of a PUC member moved toward Senate confirmation.

The Republican governor put forward Peter Lake of Austin, who has spent more than five years as an Abbott appointee to the Texas Water Development Board, as his second commission pick in as many weeks.

“I am confident he will bring a fresh perspective and trustworthy leadership to the PUC,” Abbott said of Lake, who once worked as a trader of futures and derivatives for a firm belonging to the Chicago Mercantile Exchange and more recently has eagerly promoted bonds for the State Water Implementation Fund for Texas.

“Peter’s expertise in the Texas energy industry and business management will make him an asset to the agency,” Abbott, who has touted grid readiness in recent months, said in a written statement. “I urge the Senate to swiftly confirm Peter’s appointment.”

On Monday, the Senate appeared to be moving quickly to confirm Abbott’s April 1 selection for the PUC, Will McAdams, president of Associated Builders and Contractors of Texas and a former legislative aide who helped write policy for regulated industries such as electricity.

McAdams was among the 129 nominees that the Senate Nominations Committee voted out, 8-0. His nomination heads now to the Senate floor.

All three of Abbott’s handpicked PUC commissioners who were in place before and during February’s calamitous winter storm have since quit or said they’re resigning, even as Sierra Club criticism of Abbott's demands intensified in the aftermath.

February’s polar vortex left in its wake physical and financial wreckage after a nonprofit grid operator answering to the PUC, amid calls for market reforms to avoid blackouts, shut off electricity to more than 4 million Texans, causing the deaths of at least 125 people, 13 of them in the Dallas-Fort Worth area.

Gov. Greg Abbott on Thursday named Will McAdams to the embattled Public Utility Commission of Texas. McAdams is a construction industry lobbyist with strong ties to the GOP-controlled Legislature. In Feb. 17 file photo, winter storm's snowfall andn large electrical transmission lines in South Arlington are pictured.

In a 45-minute confirmation hearing, McAdams, as lawmakers discussed ways to improve electricity reliability statewide, drew praise – and few tough questions.

McAdams, who previously worked for three GOP senators, testified that had he been on the commission in February, he would not have kept in place a controversial, $9,000-per-megawatt hour price cap on wholesale power for about 32 hours on Feb. 18-19.

“I don’t see myself making that decision,” he said.

McAdams, though, hedged slightly, saying he’s not privy to all information that the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, or ERCOT, and the PUC may have had at their disposal during the crisis.

The comments were notable because Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick and the Senate have fought with Abbott and the House over $16 billion in overcharges that, according to an independent market monitor, wrongly accrued near the end of the Feb. 15-19 outages.

Sen. Charles Schwertner, R-Georgetown, said the commission’s former chairwoman, DeAnn Walker, and Bill Magness, president of ERCOT, decided to hold the high cap in place because there “was still great concern about grid stability, even though there was significant reserves.”

He pressed McAdams to call that incorrect, which McAdams did.

“Given the fact pattern that I’m privy to, senator,” it wasn’t the right move, he said. “But again, there may be other facts out there. There probably are.”

McAdams acknowledged many homeowners and businesses were traumatized.

“The public’s confidence in the ability of the PUC to effectively regulate our electric markets has been badly damaged and shaken,” he said.

McAdams spoke favorably of renewable energy, calling wind and solar “absolutely valuable resources,” as the electricity sector faces profound change nationwide. To whatever extent those are not available, the PUC should “firm that up” with “dispatchable forms of generation,” such as gas, coal and nuclear, McAdams said.

He also called for lawmakers to consider providing electricity market bailout through “securitization,” or low-interest bond financing, to rural electric co-ops that were unable to pay the massive wholesale power bills they racked up during the February crisis.

“It would prevent those systems from having to front-load those costs onto their own members and smooth that out over a term of years,” while preventing an “uplift” of costs to other market participants who wisely hedged against soaring prices, McAdams said.

Noting that more than 400 bills have been filed to change ERCOT and how it’s governed, and as Texans prepare to vote on grid modernization funding this year, McAdams told the Senate panel, “It is clear to me that the Legislature wants meaningful changes to the status quo – to ensure that something positive comes out of this tragedy.”

Lake, who if confirmed by the Senate would replace Arthur D’Andrea as PUC chairman, grew up in Tyler. He attended prep school in New England and earned an undergraduate degree from the University of Chicago and a master of business administration degree from Stanford University.

He then worked for a commodities trading firm, a behavioral health company and as a business consultant before he became director of business development for Tyler-based Lake Ronel Oil Co. in 2014.

In late 2015, Abbott named Lake to the Texas Water Development Board and in February 2018 picked him to be the chairman of the three-member board that seeks to ensure water supplies for a fast-growing state.

Lake has steered the water board as it rolled out additional loans for water projects, approved by the Legislature and voters in 2013, and took the lead after Hurricane Harvey on flood control planning and infrastructure financing.

He’s posted exuberantly on Twitter as he toured agricultural water installations, lakes in West Texas and river authorities.

If confirmed, Lake and McAdams each would make $189,500 a year.

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Saskatchewan COVID-19 economic impact: real-time data shows drops in electricity demand, oil well licensing, traffic and tickets, plus spikes in internet usage, government site visits, remote work, and alcohol wholesale volumes.

Key Points

COVID-19 reduced energy use, drilling and traffic, while pushing activity online; jobs, rents and sales show strain.

✅ Electricity demand down 6.7%; residential usage up

✅ Oil well license applications fell 15-fold in April

✅ Internet traffic up 16%-46%; wireless LTE up 34%

We’re only just beginning to grasp how COVID-19 has upended Saskatchewan’s economy, its government and all of our lives.

The numbers that usually make headlines — job losses, economic contraction, bankruptcies — are still well behind the pace of the virus and its toll.

But other numbers change more quickly. Saskatchewan people are using less power, and the power industry is adopting on-site staffing plans to ensure reliability as conditions evolve. We’re racking up fewer speeding tickets. And as new restrictions come, we’re clicking onto Saskatchewan.ca as much as 10,000 times per minute.

Here’s some data that provides a first glimpse into how much our province has changed in just six weeks.

Electricity use tends to rise and fall in tandem with the health of the economy, and the most recent data from SaskPower suggests businesses are powering down, while regional utilities such as Manitoba Hydro seek unpaid days off to trim costs.

Peak load requirements between March 15 and April 26 were 220 MW lower than during the same period in 2019, and elsewhere BC Hydro is posting COVID-19 updates at Site C as it manages project impacts. That’s a decrease of 6.7 per cent, with total load on April 29 at 2,551 MW. A megawatt is enough electricity to power about 1,000 homes.

Separate from pandemic impacts, an external investigation at Manitoba Hydro has drawn attention to workplace conduct issues.

But it’s not homes that are turning off the lights. SaskPower spokesman Joel Cherry said commercial and industrial usage is down, while residential demand is up, with household electricity bills rising as more people stay home.

The timing of power demand has also shifted, a pattern seen as residential electricity use rises during work-from-home routines. Peak load would usually come around 8 or 9 p.m. in April. Now it’s coming earlier, typically between 5 and 6 p.m.

Oil well applications fall 15-fold
Oil prices have cratered since late February, and producers in Saskatchewan have reacted by pulling back on drilling plans, while neighbouring Alberta provides transition support for coal workers amid broader energy shifts.

Applications for well licences fell from 242 in January to 203 in February (including nine potash and one helium operations), before dropping to 84 in March. April, the month benchmark oil prices went negative for one day, producers submitted just 15 applications.

That’s 15 times fewer than the 231 applications the Ministry of Energy and Resources received in April 2019.

Well licences are needed for drilling, operating, injecting, producing or exploring an oil and gas or potash well in the province.

There has been no clear trend in well abandonment, however. There were 176 applications for abandonment in March and 155 in April, roughly in line with figures from the year before.

SGI spokesman Tyler McMurchy believes the lower numbers might stem from a combination of lower traffic volumes during part of the month, possibly combined with a shift in police priorities. The March 2020 numbers are also well below January and February figures.

Indeed, the Ministry of Highways and infrastructure reported a 16 per cent decrease in average daily traffic last month compared to March 2019, through its traffic counts at 11 different spots on highways across the province.

In Regina, traffic counts at 16 locations dropped from a high of 2.1 million in the first week of March to a low of 1.3 million during the week of March 22. That’s a 44 per cent decrease.

Counts have gradually recovered to 1.6 million in the weeks since. The data was fairly consistent at all 16 spots, which are largely major intersections, though the city cautioned they may not be representative of Regina as a whole.

Tickets for cellphone use while driving also fell, dropping from 562 in February to 314 in March. McMurchy noted that distracted driving numbers in general have been falling since November as stiffer penalties were announced. Impaired driving tickets were up, by contrast, but still within a typical range.

Internet traffic shoots up 16 per cent, far more for rural high speed
You may be spending a lot more time on Netflix and Facebook in the age of social distancing, and SaskTel has noticed.

From late February to late April, SaskTel has seen “very significant increases in provincial data traffic.” DSL and fibre optic networks have handled a 16 per cent increase in traffic, while demand on the wireless LTE network is up 34 per cent.

Usage on the Fusion network up 46 per cent. That network serves rural areas that don’t have access to other high-speed options.

The specific reference dates for comparison were February 24 and April 27.

“We attribute these changes in data usage to the pandemic and not expected seasonal or yearly shifts in usage patterns,” said spokesman Greg Jacobs.

Saskatchewan.ca was attracting just 70 page views per minute on average in February. But page views jumped over 10,000 per minute at 2:38 p.m. on March 18, as Moe was still announcing the new measures.

That’s a 14,000 per cent increase.

For all of March, visitor sessions on the site clocked in at 3,905,061, almost four times the 944,904 recorded for February.

Bureaucracy has increasingly migrated to cyberspace, with 62 per cent of civil servants now working from home. Government Skype calls, both audio and video, have tripled from 12,000 sessions per day to 35,000.Telephone conference calls increased by a factor of 14 from the first week of February to the second full week of April, with 25 times more weekly call participants. 

The Ministry of Central Services reported a 17 per cent jump in emails received by government over the past two months, excluding the Ministry of Health.

But as civil servants spend more time on their computers, the government’s fleet is spending a lot less time on the road. The ministry has purchased 40 per cent fewer litres of fuel for its vehicles over the past four weeks, compared to the same time last year.

Alcohol wholesale volumes up 22 per cent, then fall back to normal
Retailers bought more alcohol from the Saskatchewan Liquor and Gaming Authority (SLGA) last month, just as the government began tightening pandemic restrictions.

Wholesale sales volumes were up 22 per cent over March 15 to 28, compared to the same period in 2019. SLGA spokesman David Morris said the additional demand “was likely the result of retailers stocking-up as restrictions related to COVID-19 took effect.”

But the jump didn’t last. Wholesale volumes were back to normal for the first two weeks of April. SLGA did notice a very slight uptick last week, however, with volumes out of its distribution centre up three per cent. The numbers do not include Brewer’s Distributors Ltd.

It’s unclear how much more alcohol consumers actually purchased, since province-wide retail numbers were not available.

There was no discernible trend in March for anti-anxiety medication, however. The number of prescriptions filled for benzodiazepines like Valium, Xanax and Ativan see-sawed over March, according to data provided by the College of Physicians and Surgeons, but its associate registrar does not believe the trends are statistically relevant.

One-fifth of tenants miss April rent
About 20 per cent of residential rent went totally unpaid in the first six days of April, according to the Saskatchewan Landlord Association (SLA).

The precise number is 19.7 per cent, but there’s some uncertainty due to the survey method, which is based on responses from 300 residential landlords with 14,000 units. An additional 12 per cent of tenants paid a portion of their rent, but not the full amount. The figures do not include social housing.

Cameron Choquette, the association’s executive officer, partly blames the province’s decision to suspend most landlord tenant board hearings for evictions, saying it “allows more people to take advantage of landlords by not paying their rent and not facing any consequences.”

The government has defended the suspension by saying it’s needed to ensure everyone has a safe place to self-isolate if needed during the pandemic.

March’s jobs numbers were bad, with almost 21,000 fewer Saskatchewan people employed compared to February.

April’s labour force survey is expected on Friday. But new April numbers released Wednesday show that two-thirds of the province’s businesses managed to avoid laying off staff almost entirely.

According to Statistics Canada, 66.2 per cent of businesses reported laying off between zero and one per cent of their employees due to COVID-19. That was better than any other province. Just 7.6 per cent laid off all of their employees, again the best number outside the territories. The survey period was April 3 to 24.

Some businesses are even hiring. Walmart, for instance, has hired 300 people in Saskatchewan since mid-March.

Trade and Export Development Minister Jeremy Harrison chalked the data up to a relatively more optimistic business outlook in Saskatchewan, combined with “very targeted” restrictions and a support program for small and medium businesses.

That support program, which provides $5,000 grants to qualifying businesses affected by government restrictions, has only been around for three weeks. But it’s already been bombarded with 6,317 applications.

The total value of those applications would be $24,178,000, according to Harrison. Of them, 3,586 have been approved with a value of $11,755,000.

Businesses are coming to Harrison’s ministry with thousands of questions. Since it opened in March, the Business Response Team has received 4,125 calls and 1,758 emails.

The kinds of questions have changed over the course of the pandemic. Many are now asking when they can open their doors, according to Harrison, as they wonder about “grey areas” in the Re-Open Saskatchewan plan.

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U.S. Offshore Wind Capacity is set to exceed 1 GW by 2024, driven by BOEM approvals, federal leases, and resilient supply chains, with eastern states scaling renewable energy, turbines, and content despite COVID-19 disruptions.

Key Points

Projected gigawatt-scale offshore wind growth enabled by BOEM approvals, federal leases, and East Coast state demand.

✅ 17+ GW leased; only 1,870 MW in announced first phases.

✅ BOEM approvals are critical to reach >1 GW by 2024.

✅ Local supply chains mitigate COVID-19 impacts and lower costs.

Offshore wind in the U.S. will exceed 1 GW of capacity by 2024 and add more than 1 GW annually by 2027, a trajectory consistent with U.S. offshore wind power trends, according to a report released last week by Navigant Research.

The report calculated over 17 GW of offshore state and federal leases for wind production, reflecting forecasts that $1 trillion offshore wind market growth is possible. However, the owners of those leases have only announced first phase plans for 1,870 MW of capacity, leaving much of the projects in early stages with significant room to grow, according to senior research analyst Jesse Broehl.

The Business Network for Offshore Wind (BNOW) believes it is possible to hit 1 GW by 2023-24, according to CEO Liz Burdock. While the economy has taken a hit from the coronavirus pandemic, she said the offshore wind industry can continue growing as "the supply chain from Asia and Europe regains speed this summer, and the administration starts clearing" plans of construction.

BNOW is concerned with the economic hardship imposed on secondary and tertiary U.S. suppliers due to the global spread of COVID-19.

Offshore wind has been touted by many eastern states and governors as an opportunity to create jobs, with U.S. wind employment expected to expand, according to industry forecasts. Analysts see the growing momentum of projects as a way to further lower costs by creating a local supply chain, which could be jeopardized by a long-term shutdown and recession.

"The federal government must act now — today, not in December — and approve project construction and operation plans," a recent BNOW report said. Approving any of the seven projects before BOEM, which has recently received new lease requests, currently would allow small businesses to get to work "following the containment of the coronavirus," but approval of the projects next year "may be too late to keep them solvent."

The prospects for maintaining momentum in the industry falls largely to the Department of the Interior's Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM). The industry cannot hit the 1 GW milestone without project approvals by BOEM, which is revising processes to analyze federal permit applications in the context of "greater build out of offshore wind capacity," according to its website.

"It is heavily dependent on the project approval success," Burdock told Utility Dive.

Currently, seven projects are awaiting determinations from BOEM on their construction operation plans in Massachusetts, New York, where a major offshore wind farm was recently approved, New Jersey and Maryland, with more to be added soon, a BNOW spokesperson told Utility Dive.

To date, only one project has received BOEM approval for development in federal waters, a 12 MW pilot by Dominion Energy and Ørsted in Virginia. The two-turbine project is a stepping stone to a commercial-scale 2.6 GW project the companies say could begin installation as soon as 2024, and gave the developers experience with the permitting process.

In the U.S., developers have the capacity to develop 16.9 GW of offshore wind in federal U.S. lease areas, even as wind power's share of the electricity mix surges nationwide, Broehl told Utility Dive, but much of that is in early stages. The Navigant report did not address any impacts of coronavirus on offshore wind, he said.

Although Massachusetts has legislation in place to require utilities to purchase 1.6 GW of wind power by 2026, and several other projects are in early development stages, Navigant expects the first large offshore wind projects in the U.S. (exceeding 200 MW) will come online in 2022 or later, and the first projects with 400 MW or more capacity are likely to be built by 2024-2025, and lessons from the U.K.'s experience could help accelerate timelines. The U.S. would add about 1.2 GW in 2027, Broehl said.

The federal leasing activities along with the involvement from Eastern states and utilities "virtually guarantees that a large offshore wind market is going to take off in the U.S.," Broehl said.

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