Mozambique steps up energy development

Franco-German Nuclear Power Divide shapes EU energy policy, electricity market reform, and decarbonization strategies, as Paris backs reactors and state subsidies while Berlin prioritizes renewables, hydrogen, and energy security after Russian gas shocks.

Key Points

A policy rift over nuclear shaping EU market reform, subsidies, and the balance between reactors and renewables.

✅ Nuclear in EU targets vs. renewables-first strategy

✅ Market design disputes over long-term power prices

✅ Energy security after Russian gas; hydrogen definitions

Near the French village of Fessenheim, facing Germany across the Rhine, a nuclear power station stands dormant. The German protesters that once demanded the site’s closure have decamped, in a sign of Europe's nuclear decline, and the last watts were produced three years ago. 

But disagreements over how the plant from 1977 should be repurposed persist, speaking to a much deeper divide over nuclear power, which Eon chief's warning to Germany underscored, between the two countries on either side of the river’s banks.

German officials have disputed a proposal to turn it into a centre to treat metals exposed to low levels of radioactivity, Fessenheim’s mayor Claude Brender says. “They are not on board with anything that might in some way make the nuclear industry more acceptable,” he adds.

France and Germany’s split over nuclear power is a tale of diverging mindsets fashioned over decades, including since the Chernobyl disaster in USSR-era Ukraine. But it has now become a major faultline in a touchy relationship between Europe’s two biggest economies.

Their stand-off over how to treat nuclear in a series of EU reforms has consequences for how Europe plans to advance towards cleaner energy. It will also affect how the bloc secures power supplies as the region weans itself off Russian gas, even though nuclear would do little for the gas issue, and how it provides its industry with affordable energy to compete with the US and China. 

“There can be squabbles between partners. But we’re not in a retirement home today squabbling over trivial matters. Europe is in a serious situation,” says Eric-André Martin, a specialist in Franco-German relations at French think-tank IFRI. 

France, which produces two-thirds of its power from nuclear plants and has plans for more reactors, is fighting for the low-carbon technology to be factored into its targets for reducing emissions and for leeway to use state subsidies to fund the sector.

For Germany, which closed its last nuclear plants this year and, having turned its back on nuclear, has been particularly shaken by its former reliance on Russian gas, there’s concern that a nuclear drive will detract from renewable energy advances.

But there is also an economic subtext in a region still reeling from an energy crisis last year, reviving arguments for a needed nuclear option for climate in Germany, when prices spiked and laid bare how vulnerable households and manufacturers could become.

Berlin is wary that Paris would benefit more than its neighbours if it ends up being able to guarantee low power prices from its large nuclear output as a result of new EU rules on electricity markets, amid talk of a possible U-turn on the phaseout, people close to talks between the two countries say.

Ministers on both sides have acknowledged there is a problem. “The conflict is painful. It’s painful for the two governments as well as for our [EU] partners,” Sven Giegold, state secretary at the German economy and climate action ministry, where debates about whether a nuclear resurgence is possible persist, tells the Financial Times. 

Agnès Pannier-Runacher, France’s energy minister, says she wants to “get out of the realm of the emotional and move past the considerable misunderstandings that have accumulated in this discussion”.

In a joint appearance in Hamburg last week, German chancellor Olaf Scholz and French president Emmanuel Macron made encouraging noises over their ability to break the latest deadlock: a disagreement over the design of the EU’s electricity market. Ministers had been due to agree a plan in June but will now meet on October 17 to discuss the reform, aimed at stabilising long-term prices.

But the French and German impasse on nuclear has already slowed down debates on key EU policies such as rules on renewable energy and how hydrogen should be produced. Smaller member states are becoming impatient. The delay on the market design is “a big Franco-German show of incompetence again”, says an energy ministry official from another EU country who requested anonymity. 

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Duration Portfolio Energy Storage aligns layered peak demand with right-sized batteries, enabling peak shaving, gas peaker replacement, and solar-plus-storage synergy while improving grid flexibility, reliability, and T&D deferral through two- to four-hour battery durations.

Key Points

An approach that layers battery durations to match peaks, cut costs, replace peakers, and boost grid reliability.

✅ Layers 2- to 4-hour batteries by peak duration

✅ Enables solar-plus-storage and peak shaving

✅ Cuts T&D upgrades, emissions, and fuel costs

The debate over energy storage replacing gas-fired peakers has raged for years, but a new approach that shifts the terms of the argument could lead to an acceleration of storage deployments.

Rather than looking at peak demand as a single mountainous peak, some analysts now advocate a layered approach that allows energy storage to better match peak needs and complement ongoing efforts to improve solar and wind power across the grid.

"You don’t have to have batteries that run to infinity."

Some developers of solar-plus-storage projects, bolstered by cheap batteries, say they can already compete head-to-head with gas-fired peakers. "I can beat a gas peaker anywhere in the country today with a solar-plus-storage power plant," Tom Buttgenbach, president and CEO of developer 8minutenergy Renewables, recently told S&P Global.

Customers are very busy these days and rebate programs need to fit the speed of their life. Participation should be quick, easy, and accessible anywhere.

Others disagree. Storage is not disruptive for generation, but will be disruptive for transmission and distribution, Kris Zadlo, executive vice president and chief development officer at Invenergy, told the audience at a Bloomberg New Energy Finance conference last spring. Invenergy, like many renewable power developers, develops generation, energy storage and transmission projects.

But there is another path that avoids the pitfalls of positions on either end of the all-or-none approach. "Do the analysis of the need itself," Ray Hohenstein, market applications director at Fluence, told Utility Dive. If the need is only two hours in duration, it may be best served by a two-hour battery. "You don’t have to have batteries that run to infinity."

Storage vs. fossil fuel peakers

Energy storage has several benefits over traditional fossil fuel peaking plants, Hohenstein said. It is instantaneous, it has no emissions and requires no fuel, and has limited infrastructure needs. It can also help the grid absorb higher levels of renewable generation by soaking up excess output, such as solar power at noon, and many planned storage additions will be paired with solar in the next few years. But the one thing energy storage cannot do, he said, is provide limitless energy.

So, instead of looking at replacing an individual peaker, Hohenstein advocated a "duration portfolio" approach that uses energy storage to shave peak load.

If the need is for 150 MW of resources that will never need to run for more than two hours at a time, then a battery is "quite cheap," significantly less than a four or eight-hour battery, said Hohenstein. "If you fill up your peak by duration layer, it could be more cost effective."

NREL research driver

Fluence’s approach is informed by research by Paul Denholm and Robert Margolis at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), released last spring.

The NREL researchers looked at the California market where they said 11 GW of fossil fuel capacity is expected to be retired by 2029 because of new once-through-cooling requirements that are taking effect. A lot of that capacity is peaking capacity and, according to NREL’s analysis, a large fraction could be replaced with four-hour energy storage, assuming continued storage cost reductions and growth in solar installations.

The key in NREL’s research was the level of solar power penetration. There is a "synergistic" relationship between solar penetration and storage deployment, the researchers wrote, and other studies suggest wind and solar could meet 80% of U.S. demand as these trends continue.

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Medicine Hat Bitcoin Mining Deal delivers 42 MW electricity to Hut 8, enabling blockchain data centres, cryptocurrency mining expansion, and economic diversification in Alberta with low-cost power, land lease, and rapid construction near Unit 16.

Key Points

A pact to supply 42 MW and lease land, enabling Hut 8's blockchain data centres and crypto mining growth in Alberta.

✅ 42 MW electricity from city; land lease near Unit 16

✅ Hut 8 expands to 60.7 MW; blockchain data centres

✅ 100 temporary jobs; 42 ongoing roles in Alberta

The City of Medicine Hat has agreed to supply electricity and lease land to a Toronto-based cryptocurrency mining company, at a time when some provinces are pausing large new crypto loads in a deal that will see $100 million in construction spending in the southern Alberta city.

The city will provide electric energy capacity of about 42 megawatts to Hut 8 Mining Corp., which will construct bitcoin mining facilities near the city's new Unit 16 power plant.

The operation is expected to be running by September and will triple the company's operating power to 60.7 megawatts, Hut 8 said, amid broader investments in new turbines across Canada.

#google#

"The signing of the electricity supply agreement and the land lease represents a key component in achieving our business plan for the roll-out of our BlockBox Data Centres in low-cost energy jurisdictions," said the company's board chairman, Bill Tai, in a release.

"[Medicine Hat] offers stable, cost-competitive utility rates and has been very welcoming and supportive of Hut 8's fast-paced growth plans."

In bitcoin mining operations, rows upon rows of power-consuming computers are used to solve mathematical puzzles in exchange for bitcoins and confirm crytopcurrency transactions. The verified transactions are then added to the public ledger known as the blockchain.

Hut 8's existing 18.7-megawatt mining operation at Drumheller, Alta. — a gated compound filled with rows of shipping containers housing the computers — has so far mined 750 bitcoins. Bitcoin was trading Tuesday morning for about $11,180.

Medicine Hat Mayor Ted Clugston says the deal is part of the city's efforts to diversify its economy.

We've made economic development a huge priority down here because we were hit very, very hard by the oil and gas decline," he said, noting that being the generator and vendor of its own electricity puts the city in a uniquely good position.

"Really we're just turning gas into electricity and they're taking that electricity and turning it into blockchain, or ones and zeroes."

Elsewhere in Canada, using more electricity for heat has been urged by green energy advocates, reflecting broader electrification debates.

Hut 8 says construction of the facility is starting right away and will create about 100 temporary jobs. The project is expected to be finished by the third-quarter of this year.

The Medicine Hat mining operation will generate 42 ongoing jobs for electricians, general labourers, systems technicians and security staff.

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Raindrop Triboelectric Energy Harvesting converts falling water into electricity using Teflon (PTFE) on indium tin oxide and an aluminum electrode, forming a transient water bridge; a low frequency nanogenerator for renewable, static electricity harvesting.

Key Points

A method using PTFE, ITO, and an aluminum electrode to turn raindrop impacts into low frequency electrical power.

✅ PTFE on ITO boosts charge transfer efficiency.

✅ Water bridge links electrodes for rapid discharge.

✅ Low frequency output suits continuous energy harvesting.

Scientists at the City University of Hong Kong have used a Teflon-coated surface and a phenomenon called triboelectricity to generate a charge from raindrops. “Here we develop a device to harvest energy from impinging water droplets by using an architecture that comprises a polytetrafluoroethylene [Teflon] film on an indium tin oxide substrate plus an aluminium electrode,” they explain in their new paper in Nature as a step toward cheap, abundant electricity in the long term.

Triboelectricity itself is an old concept. The word means “friction electricity”—from the Greek tribo, to rub or wear down, which is why a diatribe tires you out—and dates back a long, long time. Static electricity is the most famous kind of triboelectric, and related work has shown electricity from the night sky can be harvested as well in niche setups. In most naturally occurring kinds, scientists have studied triboelectric in order to avoid its effects, like explosions inside of grain silos or hospital workers touching off pure oxygen. (Blowing sand causes an electric field, and NASA even worries about static when astronauts eventually land on Mars.)

One of the most studied forms of intentional and useful triboelectric is in systems such as ocean wave generators where the natural friction of waves meets nanogenerators of triboelectric energy. These even already use Teflon, which has natural conductivity that makes it ideal for this job. But triboelectricity is chaotic, and harnessing it generally involves a bunch of complicated, intersecting variables that can vary with the hourly weather. Promises of static electricity charging devices have often been, well, so much hot, sandy wind.

The scientists at City University of Hong Kong used triboelectric ideas to turn falling raindrops into energy. They say previous versions of the same idea were not very efficient, with materials that didn’t allow for high-fidelity transfer of electrical charge. (Many sources of renewable energy aren’t yet as efficient to turn into power, both because of developing technology and because their renewability means even less efficient use could be better than, for example, fossil fuels, and advances in renewable energy storage could help.)

“[A]chieving a high density of electrical power generation is challenging,” the team explains in its paper. “Traditional hydraulic power generation mainly uses electromagnetic generators that are heavy, bulky, and become inefficient with low water supply.” Diversifying how power is generated by water sources such as oceans and rivers is good for the existing infrastructure as well as new installations.

The research team found that as simulated raindrops fell on their device, the way the water accumulated and spread created a link between their two electrodes, one Teflon-coated and the other aluminum. This watery de facto wire link closes the loop and allows accumulated energy to move through the system. Because it’s a mechanical setup, it’s not limited to salty seawater, and because the medium is already water, its potential isn’t affected by ambient humidity either.

Raindrop energy is very low frequency, which means this tech joins many other existing pushes to harvest continuously available, low frequency natural energy, including underwater 'kites' that exploit steady currents. To make an interface that increases “instantaneous power density by several orders of magnitude over equivalent devices,” as the researchers say they’ve done here, could represent a major step toward feasibility in triboelectric generation.

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Bruce Power PPE Donation supports Canada COVID-19 response, supplying 1.2 million masks, gloves, and gowns to Ontario hospitals, long-term care, and first responders, plus face shields, hand sanitizer, and funding for testing and food banks.

Key Points

Bruce Power PPE Donation is a broad COVID-19 aid delivering PPE, supplies, and funding across Ontario.

✅ 1.2 million masks, gloves, gowns to Ontario care providers

✅ 3-D printed face shields and 50,000 bottles of sanitizer

✅ Funding testing research and supporting regional food banks

The world’s largest nuclear plant, which recently marked an operating record during sustained operations, just made Canada’s largest donation of personal protective equipment (PPE).

Bruce Power is doubling its initial donation of 600,000 masks, gloves and gowns for front-line health workers, to 1.2 million pieces of PPE.

The company, which operates the Bruce Nuclear station near Kincardine, Ont., where a major reactor refurbishment is underway, plans to have the equipment in the hands of hospitals, long-term care homes and first responders by the end of April.

It’s not the only thing Bruce Power is doing to help out Ontario during the COVID-19 pandemic:

 Bruce Power has donated $300,000 to 37 food banks in Midwestern Ontario, highlighting the broader economic benefits of Canadian nuclear projects for communities.

•  They’re also working with NPX in Kincardine to make face shields with 3-D printers, leveraging local manufacturing contracts to accelerate production.
•  They’re teaming up with the Power Worker’s Union to fund testing research in Toronto.
•  They’re working with Three Sheets Brewing and Junction 56 Distillery to distribute 50,000 bottles of hand sanitizer to those that need it.

And that’s all on top of what they’ve been doing for years, producing Cobalt-60, a medical isotope to sterilize medical equipment, and, after a recent output upgrade at the site, producing about 30 per cent of Ontario’s electricity as the province advances the Pickering B refurbishment to bolster grid reliability.

Bruce Power has over 4,000 employees working out of their nuclear plant, on the shores of Lake Huron, as it explores the proposed Bruce C project for potential future capacity.

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COVID-19 Impact on U.S. Power Demand shows falling electricity load, lower wholesale prices, and resilient utilities in competitive markets, with regional differences tied to weather, renewable energy, stay-at-home orders, and hedging strategies.

Key Points

It outlines reduced load and prices, while regulatory design and hedging support utility stability across regions.

✅ Load down in NY, New England, PJM; weather drives South up.

✅ Wholesale prices fall 8-10% in key markets.

✅ Decoupling, contracts, hedging support utility earnings.

On March 27, Bloomberg New Energy Finance (BNEF) released a report on electricity demand and wholesale market prices impact from COVID-19 fallout. The model compares expected load based largely on weather with actual observed electricity demand changes.

So far, the hardest hit power grid is New York, with load down 7 and prices off by 10 percent. That’s expected, given New York City is the current epicenter of the US health crisis.

Next is New England, with 5 percent lower demand and 8 percent reduced wholesale prices for the week from March 19-25. BNEF says the numbers could go higher following advisories and orders issued March 24 for some 70 percent of the region’s population to stay at home.

Demand on the biggest grid in the US, the PJM (Pennsylvania/Jersey/Maryland), is 4 percent lower, with prices dropping 8 percent, as recent capacity auction payouts fell sharply. BNEF believes there will be more impact as stay at home orders are ramped up in several states.

California’s power demand for March 19-25 was 5 percent below what BNEF’s model expects without COVID-19 impact. That reflects a full week of stay-at-home orders from Governor Newsom issued March 19.

Health officials in Los Angeles and elsewhere expect a spike in COVID-19 cases in coming weeks. But BNEF’s model now actually projects rising electricity load for the state, due to what it calls "freakishly mild weather a year ago."

Rounding out the report, power demand is up for a band of southern states stretching from Florida to the desert Southwest, with weather more than offsetting public response to COVID-19 so far. BNEF says the Northwest’s grid "has not yet been highly impacted," while the Southeast is "generally in line" with pre-virus expectations.

Clearly, all of this data can change quickly and radically. Only California and New York are currently in full shutdown mode. Following them are New England (70 percent), the Midwest (65 percent), Texas (50 percent), PJM (50 percent) and the Northwest (50 percent).

In contrast, only small parts of Florida, the Southeast and Southwest are restricting movement. That could mean a big future increase for shut-ins, with heightened risks of electricity shut-offs that burden households and a corresponding impact on power demand.

Also, weather will play a major role on what happens to actual electricity demand, just as it always does. A very hot summer, for example, could offset virus-related shut-ins, just as it apparently is now in states like Texas. And it should be pointed out that regions vary widely by exposure to recession-sensitive sources of demand, such as heavy industry.

Most important for investors, however, is the built in protection US utility earnings enjoy from declining power demand, even amid broader energy crisis pressures facing the sector. For one thing, US power grids in California, ERCOT (Texas), MISO (Midwest), New England, New York and PJM have wholesale power markets, where producers compete for sales and the lowest bidder sets the price.

In those states, most regulated utilities don’t produce power at all. In fact, companies’ revenue is decoupled entirely from demand in California, as well as much of New England. In the roughly three-dozen states where utilities still operate as integrated monopolies, demand does affect revenue, and in many regions flat electricity demand already persists. But the cost of electricity is passed through directly to customers, whether produced or purchased.

A number of US electric companies have invested in renewable energy facilities as part of broader electrification trends nationwide. These sell their output under long-term contracts primarily with other utilities and government entities.

This isn’t a risk free business: For the past year, generators selling electricity to bankrupt PG&E Corp (PCG) have had their cash trapped at the power plant level as surety for lenders. But even PG&E has honored its contracts. And with states continuing aggressive mandates for renewable energy adoption, growth doesn’t appear at risk to COVID-19 fallout either.

The wholesale price of power from natural gas, coal and many nuclear plants was already sliding before COVID-19, due to renewables adoption and low natural gas prices, even as coal and nuclear disruptions raise reliability concerns. But here too, big producers like Exelon Corp (EXC) and Vistra Energy (VST) have employed aggressive price hedging near term, with regulated utilities and retail businesses protecting long-term health, respectively.

Bottom line: It’s early days for the COVID-19 crisis and much can still change. But so far at least, the US power industry is absorbing the blow of reduced demand, just as it’s done in previous crises.

That means future selloffs in the ongoing bear market are buying opportunities for best in class electric utilities, not a reason to sell. For top candidates, see the Conrad’s Utility Investor Portfolios and Dream Buy List in the March issue. 

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