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Hydro-QuE9bec Class-Action Lawsuit alleges overbilling and monopoly abuse, citing RE9gie de l'E9nergie rate increases, Quebec Superior Court filings, and calls for refunds on 2008-2013 electricity bills to residential and business customers.

Key Points

Quebec class action alleging Hydro-QuE9bec overbilled customers in 2008-2013, seeking court-ordered refunds.

✅ Filed in Quebec Superior Court; certification pending.

✅ Alleges up to $1.2B in overcharges from 2008-2013.

✅ Questions RE9gie de l'E9nergie rate approvals and data.

A group representing Hydro-Québec customers has filed a motion for a class-action lawsuit against the public utility, alleging it overcharged customers over a five-year period.

Freddy Molima, one of the representatives of the Coalition Peuple allumé, accuses Hydro-Québec of "abusing its monopoly."

The motion, which was filed in Quebec Superior Court, claims Hydro-Québec customers paid more than they should have for electricity between 2008 and 2013, to the tune of nearly $1.2 billion, even as Hydro-Québec later refunded $535 million to customers in a separate case. 

The coalition has so far recruited nearly 40,000 participants online as part of its plan to sue the public utility.

A lawyer representing the group said Quebec's energy board, the Régie de l'énergie, also recently approved Hydro-Québec rate increases for residential and business customers without knowing all the facts, even as Manitoba Hydro hikes face opposition in regulatory hearings.

"There's certain information provided to the Régie that isn't true," said Bryan Furlong. "Hydro-Québec has not been providing the Régie the proper numbers."

In its motion, the group asks that overcharged clients be retroactively reimbursed.

Hydro-Québec denies allegations

Hydro-Québec, for its part, denies it ever overbilled any of its clients, while other utilities such as Hydro One plan to redesign bills to improve clarity.

"All our efficiencies have been returned to the government through our profits, and to Quebecers we have billed exactly what we agreed to bill," said spokesperson Serge Abergel, adding that the utility won't seek a rate hike next year according to its current plans.

Quebec Energy Minister Pierre Moreau also came to the public utility's defence, saying it has no choice but to comply with the  energy board's regulations, while customer protections are in focus as Hydro One moves to reconnect 1,400 customers in Ontario.

The group says the public utility has overbilled clients by up to $1.2 billion. (Radio-Canada)

It would be "shocking" if customers were charged too much money, he added.

"I know for a fact that Hydro-Québec is respecting the decision of this body," he said.

While the motion has been filed, the group cannot say how much each customer would receive if the class-action lawsuit goes ahead because it all depends on how much electricity was consumed by each client over that five-year period.

The coalition plans to present its motion to a judge next February.

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US Grid Pandemic Response coordinates control rooms, grid operators, and critical infrastructure, leveraging hydroelectric plants, backup control centers, mutual assistance networks, and deep cleaning protocols to maintain reliability amid reduced demand and COVID-19 risks.

Key Points

US Grid Pandemic Response encompasses measures by utilities and operators to safeguard power reliability during COVID-19

✅ Control rooms staffed on-site; operators split across backup centers

✅ Health screenings, deep cleaning, and isolation protocols mitigate contagion

✅ Reduced demand and mutual assistance improve grid resilience

Control rooms are the brains of NYPA’s power plants, which are mostly hydroelectric and supply about a quarter of all the electricity in New York state. They’re also a bit like human petri dishes. The control rooms are small, covered with frequently touched switches and surfaces, and occupied for hours on end by a half-dozen employees. Since social distancing and telecommuting isn’t an option in this context, NYPA has instituted regular health screenings and deep cleanings to keep the coronavirus out.

The problem is that each power plant relies on only a handful of control room operators. Since they have a specialized skill set, they can’t be easily replaced if they get sick. “They are very, very critical,” says Gil Quiniones, NYPA president and CEO. If the pandemic worsens, Quiniones says that NYPA may require control room operators to live on-site at power plants to reduce the chance of the virus making it in from the outside world. It sounds drastic, but Quiniones says NYPA has done it before during emergencies—once during the massive 2003 blackout, and again during Hurricane Sandy.

Meanwhile, PJM is one of North America’s nine regional grid operators and manages the transmission lines that move electricity from power plants to millions of customers in 13 states on the Eastern seaboard, including Washington, DC. PJM has had a pandemic response plan on the books for 15 years, but Mike Bryson, senior vice president of operations, says that this is the first time it’s gone into full effect. As of last week, about 80 percent of PJM’s 750 full-time employees have been working from home. But PJM also requires a skeleton crew of essential workers to be on-site at all times in its control centers. As part of its emergency planning, PJM built a backup control center years ago, and now it is splitting control center operators between the two to limit contact.

Past experience with large-scale disasters has helped the energy sector keep the lights on and ventilators running during the pandemic. Energy is one of 16 sectors that the US government has designated as “critical infrastructure,” which also includes the communications industry, transportation sector, and food and water systems. Each is seen as vital to the country and therefore has a duty to maintain operations during national emergencies.

“We need to be treated as first responders,” says Scott Aaronson, the vice president of security and preparedness at the Edison Electric Institute, a trade group representing private utilities. “Everybody's goal right now is to keep the public healthy, and to keep society functioning as best we can. A lack of electricity will certainly create a challenge for those goals.”

America’s electricity grid is a patchwork of regional grid operators connecting private and state-owned utilities. This means simply figuring out who’s in charge and coordinating among the various organizations is one of the biggest challenges to keeping the electricity flowing during a national emergency, according to Aaronson.

Generally, a lot of this responsibility falls on formal energy organizations like the nonprofit North American Electric Reliability Corporation and the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. But during the coronavirus outbreak, an obscure organization run by the CEOs of electric utilities called the Electricity Subsector Coordinating Council has also served as a primary liaison between the federal government and the thousands of utility companies around the US. Aaronson says the organization has been meeting twice a week for the past three weeks to ensure that utilities are implementing best practices in their response to the coronavirus, as well as to inform the government of material needs to keep the energy sector running smoothly.

This tight-knit coordination will be especially important if the pandemic gets worse, as many forecasts suggest it will. Most utilities belong to at least one mutual assistance group, an informal network of electricity suppliers that help each other out during a catastrophe. These mutual assistance networks are usually called upon following major storms that threaten prolonged outages. But they could, in principle, be used to help during the coronavirus pandemic too. For example, if a utility finds itself without enough operators to manage a power plant, it could conceivably borrow trained operators from another company to make sure the power plant stays online.

So far, utilities and grid operators have managed to make it work on their own. There have been a handful of coronavirus cases reported at power plants, but they haven’t yet affected these plants’ ability to deliver energy. The challenges of running a power plant with a skeleton crew is partially offset by the reduced power demand as businesses shut down and more people work from home, says Robert Hebner, the director of the Center for Electromechanics at the University of Texas. “The reduced demand for power gives utilities a little breathing room,” says Hebner.

A recent study by the University of Chicago’s Energy Policy Institute found that electricity demand in Italy has plunged by 18 percent following the severe increase in coronavirus cases in the country. Energy demand in China also plummeted as a result of the pandemic. Bryson, at PJM, says the grid operator has seen about a 6 percent decrease in electricity demand in recent weeks, but expects an even greater drop if the pandemic gets worse.

Generally speaking, problems delivering electricity in the US occur when the grid is overloaded or physically damaged, such as during California wildfires or a hurricane.

An open question among coronavirus researchers is whether there will be a second wave of the pandemic later this year. During the Spanish flu pandemic in the early 20th century, the second wave turned out to be deadlier than the first. If the coronavirus remerges later this year, it could be a serious threat to reliable electricity in the US, says John MacWilliams, a former associate deputy secretary of the Department of Energy and a senior fellow at Columbia University’s Center on Global Energy Policy.

“If this crisis extends into the fall, we're going to hit hurricane season along the coasts,” MacWilliams says. “Utilities are doing a very good job right now, but if we get unlucky and have an active hurricane season, they're going to get very stressed because the number of workers that are available to repair damage and restore power will become more limited.”

This was a sentiment echoed by Bryson at PJM. “Any one disaster is manageable, but when you start layering them on top of each other, it gets much more challenging,” he adds. The US electricity grid struggles to handle major storms as it is, and these challenges will be heightened if too many workers are home sick. In this sense, the energy sector’s ability to deliver the electricity needed to keep manufacturing medical supplies or keep ventilators running depends to a large extent on our ability to flatten the curve today. The coronavirus is bad enough without having to worry about the lights going out.

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Nighttime thermoradiative power converts outgoing infrared radiation into electricity using semiconductor photodiodes, leveraging negative illumination and sky cooling to harvest renewable energy from Earth-to-space heat flow when solar panels rest, regardless of weather.

Key Points

Nighttime thermoradiative power converts Earth's outgoing infrared heat into electricity using semiconductor diodes.

✅ Uses negative illumination to tap Earth-to-space heat flow

✅ Infrared semiconductor photodiodes generate small nighttime current

✅ Theoretical output ~4 W/m^2; lab demo reached 64 nW/m^2

There's a stark contrast between the freezing temperatures of space and the relatively balmy atmosphere of Earth, and that contrast could help generate electricity, scientists say – and alongside concepts such as space-based solar power, utilizing the same optoelectronic physics used in solar panels. The obvious difference this would have compared with solar energy is that it would work during the night time, a potential source of renewable power that could keep on going round the clock and regardless of weather conditions.

Solar panels are basically large-scale photodiodes - devices made out of a semiconducting material that converts the photons (light particles) coming from the Sun into electricity by exciting electrons in a material such as silicon, while concepts like space solar beaming could complement them during adverse weather.

In this experiment, the photodiodes work 'backwards': as photons in the form of infrared radiation - also known as heat radiation - leave the system, a small amount of energy is produced, similar to how raindrop electricity harvesting taps ambient fluxes in other experiments.

This way, the experimental system takes advantage of what researchers call the "negative illumination effect" – that is, the flow of outgoing radiation as heat escapes from Earth back into space. The setup explained in the new study uses an infrared semiconductor facing into the sky to convert this flow into electrical current.

"The vastness of the Universe is a thermodynamic resource," says one of the researchers, Shanhui Fan from Stanford University in California.

"In terms of optoelectronic physics, there is really this very beautiful symmetry between harvesting incoming radiation and harvesting outgoing radiation."

It's an interesting follow-up to a research project Fan participated in last year: a solar panel that can capture sunlight while also allowing excess heat in the form of infrared radiation to escape into space.

In the new study, this "energy harvesting from the sky" process can produce a measurable amount of electricity, the researchers have shown – though for the time being it's a long way from being efficient enough to contribute to our power grids, but advances in peer-to-peer energy sharing could still make niche deployments valuable.

In the team's experiments they were able to produce 64 nanowatts per square metre (10.8 square feet) of power – only a trickle, but an amazing proof of concept nevertheless. In theory, the right materials and conditions could produce a million times more than that, and analyses of cheap abundant electricity show how rapidly such advances compound, reaching about 4 watts per square metre.

"The amount of power that we can generate with this experiment, at the moment, is far below what the theoretical limit is," says one of the team, Masashi Ono from Stanford.

When you consider today's solar panels are able to generate up to 100-200 watts per square metre, and in China solar is cheaper than grid power across every city, this is obviously a long way behind. Even in its earliest form, though, it could be helpful for keeping low-power devices and machines running at night: not every renewable energy device needs to power up a city.

Now that the researchers have proved this can work, the challenge is to improve the performance of the experimental device. If it continues to show promise, the same idea could be applied to capture energy from waste heat given off by machinery, and results in humidity-powered generation suggest ambient sources are plentiful.

"Such a demonstration of direct power generation of a diode facing the sky has not been previously reported," explain the researchers in their published paper.

"Our results point to a pathway for energy harvesting during the night time directly using the coldness of outer space."

The research has been published in Applied Physics Letters.

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Trump NEPA Overhaul streamlines environmental reviews, tightening 'reasonably foreseeable' effects, curbing cumulative impacts, codifying CEQ greenhouse gas guidance, expediting permits for pipelines, highways, and wind projects with two-year EIS limits and one lead agency.

Key Points

Trump NEPA Overhaul streamlines reviews, trims cumulative impacts, keeps GHG analysis for foreseeable effects.

✅ Limits cumulative and indirect impacts; emphasizes foreseeable effects

✅ Caps EIS at two years; one-year environmental assessments

✅ One lead agency; narrower NEPA triggers for low federal funding

President Trump has announced plans for overhauling rules surrounding the nation’s bedrock environmental law, and administration officials refuted claims they were downplaying greenhouse gas emissions, as the administration also pursues replacement power plant rules in related areas.

The president, during remarks at the White House with supporters and Cabinet officials, said he wanted to fix the nation’s “regulatory nightmare” through new guidelines for implementing the National Environmental Policy Act.

“America is a nation of builders,” he said. But it takes too long to get a permit, and that’s “big government at its absolute worst.”

The president said, “We’re maintaining America’s world-class standards of environmental protection.” He added, “We’re going to have very strong regulation, but it’s going to go very quickly.”

NEPA says the federal government must consider alternatives to major projects like oil pipelines, highways and bridges that could inflict environmental harm. The law also gives communities input.

The Council on Environmental Quality has not updated the implementing rules in decades, and both energy companies and environmentalists want them reworked, even as some industry groups warned against rushing electricity pricing changes under related policy debates.

But they patently disagree on how to change the rules.

A central fight surrounds whether the government considers climate change concerns when analyzing a project.

Environmentalists want agencies to look more at “cumulative” or “indirect” impacts of projects. The Trump plan shuts the door on that.

“Analysis of cumulative effects is not required,” the plan states, adding that CEQ “proposes to make amendments to simplify the definition of effects by consolidating the definition into a single paragraph.”

CEQ Chairwoman Mary Neumayr told reporters during a conference call that definitions in the current rules were the “subject of confusion.”

The proposed changes, she said, do in fact eliminate the terms “cumulative” and “indirect,” in favor of more simplified language.

Effects must be “reasonably foreseeable” and require a “reasonably close causal relationship” to the proposed action, she added. “It does not exclude considerations of greenhouse gas emissions,” she said, pointing to parallel EPA proposals for new pollution limits on coal and gas power plants as context.

Last summer, CEQ issued proposed guidance on greenhouse gas reviews in project permitting. The nonbinding document gave agencies broad authority when considering emissions (Greenwire, June 21, 2019).

Environmentalists scoffed and said the proposed guidance failed to incorporate the latest climate science and look at how projects could be more resilient in the face of severe weather and sea-level rise.

The proposed NEPA rules released today include provisions to codify the proposed guidance, which has also been years in the making.

Other provisions

Senior administration officials sought to downplay the effect of the proposed NEPA rules by noting the underlying statute will remain the same.

“If it required NEPA yesterday, it will require NEPA under the new proposal,” an official said when asked how the changes might apply to pipelines like Keystone XL.

And yet the proposed changes could alter the “threshold consideration” that triggers NEPA review. The proposal would exclude projects with minimal federal funding or “participation.”

The Trump plan also proposes restricting an environmental impact statement to two years and an environmental assessment to one.

Neumayr said the average EIS takes 4 ½ years and in some cases longer. Democrats have disputed those timelines. Further, just 1% of all federal actions require an EIS, they argue.

The proposal would also require one agency to take the lead on permitting and require agency officials to “timely resolve disputes that may result in delays.”

In general, the plan calls for environmental documents to be “concise” and “serve their purpose of informing decision makers.”

Both Interior Secretary David Bernhardt and EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler, whose agency moved to rewrite coal power plant wastewater limits in separate actions, were at the White House for the announcement.

Reaction

An onslaught of critics have said changes to NEPA rules could be the administration’s most far-reaching environmental rollback, and state attorneys general have mounted a legal challenge to related energy actions as well.

The League of Conservation Voters declared the administration was again trying to “sell out the health and well-being of our children and families to corporate polluters.”

On Capitol Hill, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said during a news conference the administration would “no longer enforce NEPA.”

“This means more polluters will be right there, next to the water supply of our children,” she said. “That’s a public health issue. Their denial of climate, they are going to not use the climate issue as anything to do with environmental decisionmaking.”

Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) echoed the sentiment, saying he didn’t need any more proof that the fossil fuel industry had hardwired the Trump administration “but we got it anyway.”

Energy companies, including firms focused on renewable energy development, are welcoming the “clarity” of the proposed NEPA rules, even as debates continue over a clean electricity standard in federal climate policy.

“The lack of clarity in the existing NEPA regulations has led courts to fill the gaps, spurring costly litigation across the sector, and has led to unclear expectations, which has caused significant and unnecessary delays for infrastructure projects across the country,” the Interstate Natural Gas Association of America said in a statement.

Last night, the American Wind Energy Association said NEPA rules have caused “unreasonable and unnecessary costs and long project delays” for land-based and offshore wind energy and transmission development.

Trump has famously attacked the wind energy industry for decades, dating back to his opposition to a Scottish wind turbine near his golf course.

The president today said he won’t stop until “gleaming new infrastructure has made America the envy of the world again.”

When asked whether he thought climate change was a “hoax,” as he once tweeted, he said no. “Nothing’s a hoax about that,” he said.

The president said there’s a book about climate he’s planning to read. He said, “It’s a very serious subject.”

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Iran Electricity Grid Synchronization enables regional interconnection, cross-border transmission, and Caspian-Europe energy corridors, linking Iraq, Azerbaijan, Russia, and Qatar to West Asia and European markets with reliable, flexible power exchange.

Key Points

Iran's initiative to link West Asian and European power grids for trade, transit, reliability, and regional influence.

✅ Synchronizes grids with Iraq, Azerbaijan, Russia, and potential Qatar link

✅ Enables east-to-Europe electricity transit via Caspian energy corridors

✅ Backed by gas-fueled and combined-cycle generation capacity

Following a plan for becoming West Asia’s electricity hub, Iran has been taking serious steps for joining its electricity network with neighbors in the past few years.

The Iranian Energy Ministry has been negotiating with the neighboring countries including Iraq for the connection of their power networks with Iran, discussing Iran-Iraq energy cooperation as well as ties with Russia, Afghanistan, Azerbaijan, and Qatar to make them enable to import or transmit their electricity to new destination markets through Iran.

The synchronization of power grids with the neighboring countries, not only enhances Iran’s electricity exchanges with them, but it will also increase the political stance of the country in the region.

So far, Iran’s electricity network has been synchronized with Iraq, where Iran is supplying 40% of Iraq's power today, and back in September, the Energy Minister Reza Ardakanian announced that the electricity networks of Russia and Azerbaijan are the next in line for becoming linked with the Iranian grid in the coming months.

“Within the next few months, the study project of synchronization of the electricity networks of Iran, Azerbaijan, and Russia will be completed and then the executive operations will begin,” the minister said.

Meanwhile, Ardakanian and Qatari Minister of State for Energy Affairs Saad Sherida Al-Kaabi held an online meeting in late September to discuss joining the two countries' electricity networks via sea.

During the online meeting, Al-Kaabi said: "Electricity transfer between the two countries is possible and this proposal should be worked on.”

Now, taking a new step toward becoming the region’s power hub, Iran has suggested becoming a bridge between East and Europe for transmitting electricity.

In a virtual conference dubbed 1st Caspian Europe Forum hosted by Berlin on Thursday, the Iranian energy minister has expressed the country’s readiness for joining its electricity network with Europe.

"We are ready to connect Iran's electricity network, as the largest power generation power in West Asia, with the European countries and to provide the ground for the exchange of electricity with Europe," Ardakanian said addressing the online event.

Iran's energy infrastructure in the oil, gas, and electricity sectors can be used as good platforms for the transfer of energy from east to Europe, he noted.

In the event, which was aimed to study issues related to the development of economic cooperation, especially energy, between the countries of the Caspian Sea region, the official added that Iran, with its huge energy resources and having skilled manpower and advanced facilities in the field of energy, can pave the ground for the prosperity of international transport and energy corridors.

"In order to help promote communication between our landlocked neighbors with international markets, as Uzbekistan aims to export power to Afghanistan across the region, we have created a huge transit infrastructure in our country and have demonstrated in practice our commitment to regional development and peace and stability," Ardakanian said.

He pointed out that having a major percentage of proven oil and gas resources in the world, regional states need to strengthen relations in a bid to regulate production and export policies of these huge resources and potentially play a role in determining the price and supply of these resources worldwide.

“EU countries can join our regional cooperation in the framework of bilateral or multilateral mechanisms such as ECO,” he said.

Given the growing regional and global energy needs and the insufficient investment in the field, with parts of Central Asia facing severe electricity shortages today, as well as Europe's increasing needs, this area can become a sustainable area of cooperation, he noted.

Ardakanian also said that by investing in energy production in Iran, Europe can meet part of its future energy needs on a sustainable basis.

In Iraq, plans for nuclear power plants are being pursued to tackle chronic electricity shortages, reflecting parallel efforts to diversify generation.

Iran currently has electricity exchange with Armenia, Azerbaijan, Iraq, where grid rehabilitation deals have been finalized, Turkmenistan, and Afghanistan.

The country’s total electricity exports vary depending on the hot and cold seasons of the year, since during the hot season which is the peak consumption period, the country’s electricity exports decreases, however electrical communication with neighboring countries continues.

Enjoying abundant gas resources, which is the main fuel for the majority of the country’s power plants, Iran has the capacity to produce about 85,500 megawatts [85.5 gigawatts (GW)] of electricity.

Currently, combined cycle power plants account for the biggest share in the country’s total power generation capacity as Iran is turning thermal plants to combined cycle to save energy, followed by gas power plants.

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TransLink Electric Bus Pilot launches zero-emission service in Metro Vancouver, cutting greenhouse gas emissions with fast-charging stations on Route 100, supporting renewable energy goals alongside trolley buses, CNG, and hybrid fleets.

Key Points

TransLink's Metro Vancouver program deploying charging, zero-emission buses on Route 100 to cut emissions and fuel costs.

✅ Cuts ~100 tonnes GHG and saves $40k per bus annually

✅ Five-minute on-route charging at terminals on Route 100

✅ Pilot data to guide zero-emission fleet transition by 2050

TransLink's first battery-electric buses are taking to the roads in Metro Vancouver as part of a pilot project to reduce emissions, joining other initiatives like electric school buses in B.C. that aim to cut pollution in transportation.

The first four zero-emission buses picked up commuters in Vancouver, Burnaby and  New Westminster on Wednesday. Six more are expected to be brought in, and similar launches like Edmonton's first electric bus are underway across Canada.

"With so many people taking transit in Vancouver today, electric buses will make a real difference," said Merran Smith, executive director of Clean Energy Canada, a think tank at Simon Fraser University, in a release.

According to TransLink, each bus is expected to reduce 100 tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions and save $40,000 in fuel costs per year compared to a conventional diesel bus.

"Buses already help tackle climate change by getting people out of cars, and Vancouver is ahead of the game with its electric trolleys," Smith said.

She added there is still more work to be done to get every bus off diesel, as seen with the TTC's battery-electric buses rollout in Toronto.

The buses will run along the No. 100 route connecting Vancouver and New Westminster. They recharge — it takes about five minutes — at new charging stations installed at both ends of the route while passengers load and unload or while the driver has a short break. 

Right now, more than half of TransLink's fleet currently operates with clean technology, offering insights alongside Toronto's large battery-electric fleet for other cities. 

In addition to the four new battery-electric buses, the fleet also includes hundreds of zero-emission electric trolley buses, compressed natural gas buses and hybrid diesel-electric buses, while cities like Montreal's first STM electric buses continue to expand adoption.

"Our iconic trolley buses have been running on electricity since 1948 and we're proud to integrate the first battery-electric buses to our fleet," said TransLink CEO Kevin Desmond in a press release.

TransLink has made it a goal to operate its fleet with 100 per cent renewable energy in all operations by 2050. Desmond says, the new buses are one step closer to meeting that goal.

The new battery-electric buses are part of a two-and-a-half year pilot project that looks at the performance, maintenance, and customer experience of making the switch to electric, complementing BC Hydro's vehicle-to-grid pilot initiative underway in the province.

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