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U.S. Energy Transition Delays stem from grid bottlenecks, permitting red tape, solar tariff uncertainty, supply-chain shocks, and scarce affordable EVs, risking deeper fossil fuel lock-in despite climate targets for renewables, transmission expansion, and decarbonization.

Key Points

Delays driven by grid limits, permitting, and supply shocks that slow renewables, transmission, EVs, and decarbonization.

✅ Grid interconnection and transmission backlogs stall renewables

✅ Tariff probes and supply chains disrupt utility-scale solar

✅ Permitting, policy gaps, and EV costs sustain fossil fuel use

Big solar projects are facing major delays. Plans to adapt the grid to clean energy are confronting mountains of red tape. Affordable electric vehicles are in short supply.

The United States is struggling to squeeze opportunity out of an energy crisis that should have been a catalyst for cleaner, domestically produced power. After decades of putting the climate on the back burner, the country is finding itself unprepared to seize the moment and at risk of emerging from the crisis even more reliant on fossil fuels.

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The problem is not entirely unique to the United States. Across the globe, climate leaders are warning that energy shortages including coal and nuclear disruptions prompted by Russia’s unprovoked invasion of Ukraine and high gas prices driven by inflation threaten to make the energy transition an afterthought — potentially thwarting efforts to keep global temperature rise under 1.5 degrees Celsius.

“The energy crisis exacerbated by the war in Ukraine has seen a perilous doubling down on fossil fuels by the major economies,” U.N. Secretary General António Guterres said at a conference in Vienna on Tuesday, according to prepared remarks. He warned governments and investors that a failure to immediately and more aggressively embrace clean energy could be disastrous for the planet.

U.S. climate envoy John F. Kerry suggested that nations are falling prey to a flawed logic that fossil fuels will help them weather this period of instability, undermining U.S. national security and climate goals, which has seen gas prices climb to a record-high national average of $5 per gallon. “You have this new revisionism suggesting that we have to be pumping oil like crazy, and we have to be moving into long-term [fossil fuel] infrastructure building,” he said at the Time100 Summit in New York this month. “We have to push back.”

Climate envoy John F. Kerry attends the Summit of the Americas in Los Angeles on June 8. Kerry has criticized the tendency to turn toward fossil fuels in times of uncertainty. (Apu Gomes/AFP/Getty Images)
In the United States — the world’s second-largest emitter of greenhouse gases after China — the hurdles go beyond the supply-chain crisis and sanctions linked to the war in Ukraine. The country’s lofty goals for all carbon pollution to be gone from the electricity sector by 2035 and for half the cars sold to be electric by 2030 are jeopardized by years of neglect of the electrical grid, regulatory hurdles that have set projects back years, and failures by Congress and policymakers to plan ahead.
The challenges are further compounded by plans to build costly new infrastructure for drilling and exporting natural gas that will make it even harder to transition away from the fossil fuel.

“We are running into structural challenges preventing consumers and businesses from going cleaner, even at this time of high oil and gas prices,” said Paul Bledsoe, a climate adviser in the Clinton administration who now works on strategy at the Progressive Policy Institute, a center-left think tank. “It is a little alarming that even now, Congress is barely talking about clean energy.”

Consumers are eager for more wind and solar. Companies looking to go carbon-neutral are facing growing waitlists for access to green energy, and a Pew Research Center poll in late January found that two-thirds of Americans want the United States to prioritize alternative energy over fossil fuel production.

But lawmakers have balked for more than a decade at making most of the fundamental economic and policy changes such as a clean electricity standard that experts widely agree are crucial to an orderly and accelerated energy transition. The United States does not have a tax on carbon, nor a national cap-and-trade program that would reorient markets toward lowering emissions. The unraveling in Congress of President Biden’s $1.75 trillion Build Back Better plan has added to the head winds that green-energy developers face, even as climate law results remain mixed.

Vice President Harris tours electric school buses at Meridian High School in Falls Church, Va., on May 20. (Mandel Ngan/AFP/Getty Images)
“There is literally nothing pushing this forward in the U.S. beyond the tax code and some state laws,” said Heather Zichal, a former White House climate adviser who is now the chief executive of the American Clean Power Association.

The effects of the U.S. government’s halting approach are being felt by solar-panel installers, who saw the number of projects in the most recent quarter fall to the lowest level since the pandemic began. There was 24 percent less solar installed in the first quarter of 2022 than in the same quarter of 2021.

The holdup largely stems from a Commerce Department investigation into alleged tariff-dodging by Chinese manufacturers. Faced with the potential for steep retroactive penalties, hundreds of industrial-scale solar projects were frozen in early April. Weak federal policies to encourage investment in solar manufacturing left American companies ill-equipped to fill the void.

“We shut down multiple projects and had to lay off dozens of people,” said George Hershman, chief executive of SOLV Energy, which specializes in large solar installations. SOLV, like dozens of other solar companies, is now scrambling to reassemble those projects after the administration announced a pause of the tariffs.

Meanwhile, adding clean electricity to the aging power grid has become an increasingly complicated undertaking, given the failure to plan for adequate transmission lines and long delays connecting viable wind and solar projects to the electricity network.

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California Managed Decline of Fossil Fuels aligns oil phaseout with carbon neutrality, leveraging ZEV adoption, solar and wind growth, severance taxes, drilling setbacks, fracking oversight, CARB rules, and CalGEM regulation to deliver a just transition.

Key Points

California's strategy to phase out oil and gas while meeting carbon-neutral goals through policy, regulation, and equity.

✅ Severance taxes fund clean energy and workforce transition.

✅ Setbacks restrict drilling near schools, homes, and hospitals.

✅ CARB and CalGEM tighten fracking oversight and ZEV targets.

California’s energy past is on a collision course with its future. Think of major oil-producing U.S. states, and Texas, Alaska or North Dakota probably come to mind. Although its position relative to other states has been falling for 20 years, California remains the seventh-largest oil-producing state, with 162 million barrels of crude coming up in 2018, translating to tax revenue and jobs.

At the same time, California leads the nation in solar rooftops and electric vehicles on the road by a wide margin and ranking fifth in installed wind capacity. Clean energy is the state’s future, and the state is increasingly exporting its energy policies across the West, influencing regional markets. By law, California must have 100 percent carbon-free electricity by 2045, and an executive order signed by former Governor Jerry Brown calls for economywide carbon-neutrality by the same year.

So how can the state reconcile its divergent energy path? How should clean-energy-minded lawmakers wind down California’s oil and gas sector in a way that aligns with the state’s long-term climate targets while providing a just transition for the industry’s workforce?

Any efforts to reduce fossil fuel supply must run parallel to aggressive demand-reduction measures such as California’s push to have 5 million zero-emission vehicles on the road by 2030, said Ethan Elkind, director of Berkeley Law's climate program, especially amid debates over keeping the lights on without fossil fuels in the near term. After all, if oil demand in California remains strong, crude from outside the state will simply fill the void.

“If we don’t stop using it, then that supply is going to get here, even if it’s not produced in-state,” Elkind said in an interview.

Lawmakers have a number of options for policies that would draw down and eventually phase out fossil fuel production in California, according to a new report from the Center for Law, Energy and the Environment at the UC Berkeley School of Law, co-authored by Elkind and Ted Lamm.

They could impose a higher price on California's oil production through a "severance" tax or carbon-based fee, with the revenue directed to measures that wean the state from fossil fuels. (California, alone among major oil-producing states, does not have an oil severance tax.)

Lawmakers could establish a minimum drilling setback from schools, playgrounds, homes and other sensitive sites. They could push the state's oil and gas regulator, the California Geologic Energy Management Division, to prioritize environmental and climate concerns.

A major factor holding lawmakers back is, of course, politics, including debates over blackouts and climate policy that shape public perception. Given the state’s clean-energy ambitions, it might surprise non-Californians that the oil and gas industry is one of the Golden State’s most powerful special interest groups.

Overcoming a "third-rail issue" in California politics
The Western States Petroleum Association, the sector’s trade group in California's capital of Sacramento, spent $8.8 million lobbying state policymakers in 2019, more than any other interest group. Over the last five years, the group, which cultivates both Democratic and Republican lawmakers, has spent $43.3 million on lobbying, nearly double the total of the second-largest lobbying spender.

Despite former Governor Brown’s reputation as a climate champion, critics say he was unwilling to forcefully take on the oil and gas industry. However, things may take a different turn under Brown's successor, Governor Gavin Newsom.

In May 2019, when Newsom released California's midyear budget revision (PDF), the governor's office noted the need for "careful study and planning to decrease demand and supply of fossil fuels, while managing the decline in a way that is economically responsible and sustainable.”

Related reliability concerns surfaced as blackouts revealed lapses in power supply across the state.

Writing for the advocacy organization Oil Change International, David Turnbull observed, “This may mark the first time that a sitting governor in California has recognized the need to embark upon a managed decline of fossil fuel supply in the state.”

“It is significant because typically this is one of those third-rail issues, kind of a hot potato that governors don’t even want to touch at all — including Jerry Brown, to a large extent, who really focused much more on the demand side of fuel consumption in the state,” said Berkeley Law’s Elkind.

California's revised budget included $1.5 million for a Transition to a Carbon-Neutral Economy report, which is being prepared by University of California researchers for the California Environmental Protection Agency. In an email, a CalEPA spokesperson said the report is due by the end of this year.

Winding down oil and gas production
Since the release of the revised budget last May, Newsom has taken initial steps to increase oversight of the oil and gas industry. In July 2019, he fired the state’s top oil and gas regulator for issuing too many permits to hydraulically fracture, or frack, wells.

Later in the year, he appointed new leadership to oversee oil and gas regulation in the state, and he signed a package of bills that placed constraints on fossil fuel production. The next month, Newsom halted the approval of new fracking operations until pending permits could be reviewed by a panel of scientists at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. The California Geologic Energy Management Division (CalGEM) did not resume issuing fracking permit approvals until April of this year.

Not all steps have been in the same direction. This month Newsom dropped a proposal to add dozens of analysts, engineers and geologists at CalGEM, citing COVID-related economic pressure. The move would have increased regulatory oversight on fossil fuel producers and was opposed by the state's oil industry.

Ultimately, more durable measures to wind down fossil fuel supply and demand will require new legislation, even as regulators weigh whether the state needs more power plants to maintain reliability.

A 2019 bill by Assemblymember Al Muratsuchi (D-Torrance), AB 345, would have codified the minimum 2,500-foot setback for new oil and gas wells. However, before the final vote in the Assembly, the bill’s buffer requirement was dropped and replaced with a requirement for CalGEM “to consider a setback distance of 2,500 feet.” The bill passed the Assembly in January over "no" votes from several moderate Democrats; it now awaits action in the Senate.

A bill previously introduced by Assemblymember Phil Ting (D-San Francisco), AB 1745, didn’t even make it that far. Ting’s bill would have required that all new passenger cars registered in the state after January 1, 2040, be zero-emission vehicles (ZEV). The bill died in committee without a vote in April 2018.

But the backing of the California Air Resources Board (CARB), one of the world's most powerful air-quality regulators, could change the political conversation. In March, CARB chair Mary Nichols said she now supports consideration of California establishing a 100 percent zero-emission vehicle sales target by 2030, as policymakers also consider a revamp of electricity rates to clean the grid.

“In the past, I’ve been skeptical about whether that would do more harm than good in terms of the backlash by dealers and others against something that sounded so un-California like,” Nichols said during an online event. “But as time has gone on, I’ve become more convinced that we need to send the longer-term signal about where we’re headed.”

Another complicating factor for California’s political leaders is the lack of a willing federal partner — at least in the short term — in winding down oil and gas production, amid warnings about a looming electricity shortage that could pressure the grid.

Under the Trump administration, the Bureau of Land Management, which oversees 15 million acres of federal land in California, has pushed to open more than 1 million acres of public and private land across eight counties in Central California to fracking. In January 2020, California filed a federal lawsuit to block the move.

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Canada 2035 Clean Electricity Target faces a 48.4GW shortfall as renewable capacity lags; accelerating wind, solar PV, grid upgrades, and coherent federal-provincial policy is vital to reach zero-emissions power and strengthen transmission and distribution.

Key Points

Canada's plan to supply nearly 100% of electricity from zero-emitting sources by 2035, requiring renewable buildout.

✅ Average adds 2.6GW; shortfall totals 48.4GW by 2035

✅ Expand wind, solar PV, storage, and grid modernization

✅ Align federal-province policy; retire or convert thermal plants

GlobalData’s latest report, ‘Canada Power Market Size and Trends by Installed Capacity, Generation, Transmission, Distribution and Technology, Regulations, Key Players and Forecast, 2022-2035’, discusses the power market structure of Canada and, amid looming power challenges, provides historical and forecast numbers for capacity, generation and consumption up to 2035. Detailed analysis of the country’s power market regulatory structure, competitive landscape and a list of major power plants are provided. The report also gives a snapshot of the power sector in the country on broad parameters of macroeconomics, supply security, generation infrastructure, transmission and distribution infrastructure, electricity import and export scenario, degree of competition, regulatory scenario, and future potential. An analysis of the deals in the country’s power sector is also included in the report.

Canada is expected to fall short of its 2035 clean electricity target after reviewing the country’s current renewable capacity activity. The country has targeted to produce nearly 100% of its electricity from zero-emitting sources by 2035, while electricity associations' net-zero goals extend to 2050; however, the country is adding only 2.6GW of annual renewable capacity additions on average every year, which would mean a cumulative shortfall of 48.4GW.

Canada has good governmental support, but it is not doing enough to ensure its targets are met. If the country is to meet its target to produce nearly 100% of electricity from zero-emitting sources by 2035, the country should both increase the capacity and efficiency of renewable power plants, as well as provide comprehensive end-to-end policies at both the federal and provincial levels, as debates over whether Ontario is embracing clean power continue across provinces. It should also involve communities and businesses in raising awareness of the benefits of adopting renewable energy.

The country has a large amount of proven natural gas and oil reserves that are proving too tempting an opportunity, and the Canadian Government is planning to increase the capacity of its gas-based plants under net-zero regulations permit some gas in the power mix, to secure real-time demand and supply. However, the country’s dependency on gas-based plants creates a major challenge to achieve its 2035 clean electricity target.

If the Canadian Government is to meet its 2035 targets, it should draw on examples from its European counterparts and add renewable capacity at a rapid pace, while balancing demand and emissions in key provinces. One advantage for Canada here is that it does not have land constraints, which is common in other major renewable power-generating countries. This could give the country an estimated 6.1GW of renewable capacity every year on average during the 2021-2035 period: enough capacity to meet its target. Most of these installations are expected to be for wind and solar PV.

Changing provincial governments are not helpful when it comes to implementing long-term projects, especially as Ontario faces looming electricity shortfalls that heighten planning risks, and continued stopping and starting of projects like this will only be damaging to renewable goals. Another way the country can achieve its target is by converting thermal power plants into clean energy plants and providing a roadmap or timeline for provinces to retire thermal power plants completely, even as scrapping coal can be costly for some systems.

Canada’s GDP (at constant prices) increased from $1,617.3bn in 2010 to $1,924.5bn in 2021, at a CAGR of 1.6%. The GDP (at constant prices) of the country declined sharply from $1,943.8bn in 2019 to $1,840.5bn in 2020 because of Covid-19 pandemic. After the recommencement of regular industrial and trade activities, the GDP grew by 4.6% in 2021 from 2020. The GDP is expected to cross pre-pandemic levels by the end of 2022.

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Remote Work Energy Costs are rising as home offices and telecommuting boost electricity bills; utilities, broadband usage, and COVID-19-driven stay-at-home policies affect productivity, consumption patterns, and household budgets across the U.K. and Europe.

Key Points

Remote Work Energy Costs are increased household electricity and utility expenses from telecommuting and home office use.

✅ WFH shifts energy load from offices to households.

✅ Higher device, lighting, and heating/cooling usage drives bills.

✅ Broadband access gaps limit remote work equity.

Household electricity bills are set to soar, with rising residential electricity use tied to the millions of people now working at home to avoid catching the coronavirus.

Running laptops and other home appliances will cost consumers an extra 52 million pounds ($60 million) each week in the U.K., according to a study from Uswitch, a website that helps consumers compare the energy prices that utilities charge.

For each home-bound household, the pain to the pocketbook may be about 195 pounds per year extra, even as some utilities pursue pandemic cost-cutting to manage financial pressures.

The rise in price for households comes even as overall demand is falling rapidly in Europe, with wide swaths of the economy shut down to keep workers from gathering in one place, and the U.S. grid overseer issuing warnings about potential pandemic impacts on operations.

People stuck at home will plug in computers, lights and appliances when they’d normally be at the office, increasing their consumption.

With the Canadian government declaring a state of emergency due to the coronavirus, companies are enabling work-from-home structures to keep business running and help employees follow social distancing guidelines, and some utilities have even considered housing critical staff on site to maintain operations. However, working remotely has been on the rise for a while.

“The coronavirus is going to be a tipping point. We plodded along at about 10% growth a year for the last 10 years, but I foresee that this is going to really accelerate the trend,” Kate Lister, president of Global Workplace Analytics.

Gallup’s State of the Workplace 2017 study found that 43% of employees work remotely with some frequency. Research indicates that in a five-day workweek, working remotely for two to three days is the most productive. That gives the employee two to three days of meetings, collaboration and interaction, with the opportunity to just focus on the work for the other half of the week.

Remote work seems like a logical precaution for many companies that employ people in the digital economy, even as some federal agencies sparked debate with an EPA telework policy during the pandemic. However, not all Americans have access to the internet at home, and many work in industries that require in-person work.

According to the Pew Research Center, roughly three-quarters of American adults have broadband internet service at home. However, the study found that racial minorities, older adults, rural residents and people with lower levels of education and income are less likely to have broadband service at home. In addition, 1 in 5 American adults access the internet only through their smartphone and do not have traditional broadband access. 

Full-time employees are four times more likely to have remote work options than part-time employees. A typical remote worker is college-educated, at least 45 years old and earns an annual salary of $58,000 while working for a company with more than 100 employees, according to Global Workplace Analytics, and in Canada there is growing interest in electricity-sector careers among younger workers. 

New York, California and other states have enacted strict policies for people to remain at home during the coronavirus pandemic, which could change the future of work, and Canadian provinces such as Saskatchewan have documented how the crisis has reshaped local economies across sectors.

“I don’t think we’ll go back to the same way we used to operate,” Jennifer Christie, chief HR officer at Twitter, told CNBC. “I really don’t.”

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Daimler Electric Strategy drives EV adoption with global battery factories, Mercedes-Benz electrified models, battery cells procurement, and major investments spanning vans, buses, trucks, and production capacity across Europe, Asia, and the USA.

Key Points

Daimler Electric Strategy is a multi-billion EV roadmap for batteries, factories, and 130 electrified Mercedes models.

✅ Eight battery factories across three continents

✅ EUR 10B for EV lineup; EUR 20B for battery cells

✅ 130 electrified variants plus vans, buses, trucks

Throughout 2018, we all witnessed the unprecedented volume of promises for a better future made by the giants of the auto industry. All say they've committed billions so that, within a decade, combustion engines will be on their way out.

The most active of all companies when talking about promises is Volkswagen, which, amid German plant closures, time and time again has said it will do this or that and completely change the meaning of car in the coming years. But there are other planning the same thing, possibly with even vaster resources.

Planning to end the year on a high note, Daimler detailed its plan for the electric future once again on Tuesday, this time making no secret of its gigantic size and scope.

As announced before, Daimler plans to build electric cars, but also manufacture electric batteries for its own and others’ use, and has launched a US energy storage company to support this strategy. These batteries will eventually be produced by Daimler in eight factories on three continents.

Batteries are already rolling off the lines in Kamenz, and a second facility will begin doing so next year. Two more factories will be built in Stuttgart-Untertürkheim, one at the company’s Sindelfingen site, and one each at the sites in Beijing (China), Bangkok (Thailand) and Tuscaloosa (USA).

In all, one billion EUR will be invested in the expansion of the global battery production network, but that is nothing compared to the 10 billion to be poured into the expansion of the Mercedes-Benz car fleet.

On top of that, 20 billion EUR will go towards the purchase of battery cells from producers all around the world, echoing other automakers' battery sourcing strategies worldwide over the next 12 years.

“After investing billions of euros in the development of the electric fleet and the expansion of our global battery network, we are now taking the next step,” said in a statement Dieter Zetsche, Daimler chairman of the board.

“With the purchase of battery cells for more than 20 billion euros, we are systematically pushing forward with the transformation into the electric future of our company.”

By 2022, the carmaker plans to launch 130 electrified variants of its cars, as cheaper, more powerful batteries become available, adding to them electric vans, buses and trucks. That pretty much means all the models and variants sold by Daimler globally will be at least partially powered by electricity.

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Hydro-Quebec back-billing arises from analogue meter errors and estimated consumption, leading to arrears for electricity usage; disputes over access, payment plans, and potential power diversion reviews can impact cottage owners near Gatineau.

Key Points

Hydro-Quebec back-billing recovers underbilled electricity from analogue meter errors or prolonged estimated use.

✅ Triggered by inaccurate analogue meters or missed readings

✅ Based on actual usage versus prior estimated consumption

✅ Payment plans may spread arrears; theft checks may adjust

A relaxing lakefront cottage has become a powerful source of stress for an Ottawa woman who Hydro-Quebec is charging $5,300 to cover what it says are years of undercharging for electricity usage.

The utility said an old analogue power meter is to blame for years of inaccurate electricity bills for the summer getaway near Gatineau, Que.

Separate from individual billing issues, Hydro-Quebec has also reported pandemic-related losses earlier this year.

Owner Jan Hodgins does not think she should be held responsible for the mistake, nor does she understand how her usage could have surged over the years.

“I’m very hydro conscious, because I was raised that way. When you left a room, you always turned the light out,” she told CTV Montreal on Wednesday, relating her shock after receiving some hefty bills from Hydro-Quebec on Sept. 22.

Hodgins said she mainly uses the cottage on weekends, does not heat the place when she is not there, and does not use a washer or dryer, to keep her energy footprint as small as possible. She’s owned the cottage for 14 years, during which she says her monthly bill has hovered around $40.

Hydro-Quebec said it has not had an accurate reading of her usage for several years, relying instead on consumption estimates to determine what she pays. The company recently reviewed her energy consumption back to 2014, and found their estimates were not accurate.

“In the past, she was consuming about 10 to 15 kilowatt hours per day. This summer she was more around 40 kilowatt hours per day,” Marc-Antoine Pouliot with Hydro-Quebec told CTV Ottawa.

Hodgins said that means her regular bill will now be more than twice the $200 her neighbours are paying for hydro each month, even with peak hydro rates in place.

Hydro-Quebec said it will correct the bill if its technicians discover that someone is illegally diverting power nearby.

Hodgins said it’s not her fault that technicians did not check her meter in person, and chose to rely on inaccurate estimates. Pouliot argues that reaching her cottage was too difficult.

“There was too much snow. There were conditions during the winter disconnection ban period, and the consequence was that people, our workers, were not able to reach the meter,” he said.

Hydro-Quebec said it is willing to stretch out the debt into monthly payments over a year, which Hodgins said amount to $440 per month on top of her regular bill.

Utilities also caution customers about scammers threatening shutoffs during billing disputes.

“I’m on a fixed income. I don’t have that kind of money. I’m completely distraught,” she said. “I don’t know what I’m going to do.”

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