Veridian announces excellent financial performance

France Electricity Pricing Mechanism aligns with EU rules, leveraging nuclear energy and EDF profits, avoiding Contracts for Difference, redistributing windfalls to industry and households, targeting €70/MWh amid electricity market reform and Brussels oversight.

Key Points

A framework to keep power near €70/MWh by reclaiming EDF windfalls and redistributing them under EU market rules.

✅ Targets average price near €70/MWh from 2026

✅ Skims EDF profits above €78-80 and €110/MWh thresholds

✅ Aligns with EU rules; avoids nuclear CfDs and state aid clashes

France has unveiled a new electricity pricing mechanism, hoping to defuse months of tension over energy subsidies with Brussels and its neighbors.

The strain has included a Franco-German fight over EU electricity reform with Germany accusing France of wanting to subsidize its industry via artificially low energy prices, while Paris maintained it should have the right to make the most of its relatively cheap nuclear energy. That fight has now been settled.

On Tuesday, the French government presented a new mechanism — complex, and still-to-be-detailed — to bring the average price of electricity closer to €70 per megawatt hour (MWh) as of 2026, amid Europe's electricity market revamp efforts.

"The agreement has been defined to comply with European rules and avoid difficulties with the European Commission," said France's Economy and Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire, noting that France had ruled out other "simpler" options that would have caused tension with Brussels.

For example, France has not yet envisaged the use of state-backed investment schemes called Contracts for Difference (CfD), which were the main source of discord in talks with Germany on the electricity market reform and the EU push for more fixed-price contracts in generation. The compromise agreed by EU ministers last month gives the Commission the power to monitor CfDs in the nuclear sector.

"France wanted to limit as much as possible the European Commission's nuisance power," said Phuc-Vinh Nguyen, an energy expert at the Jacques Delors Institute think tank in Paris.

The announcement came weeks after French President Emmanuel Macron promised that France would "take back control" of its electricity prices to allow its industry to make the most of the country's relatively cheap nuclear energy.

Germany, by contrast, has moved to support energy-intensive industries with an industrial electricity subsidy, underscoring the policy divergence.

“The price of electricity has always been a major competitive advantage for the French nation, and it must remain so,” Le Maire said.

Under the new mechanism, part of a broader deal on electricity prices between the state and EDF, the government will seize EDF profits above certain thresholds and redistribute them directly to industry and households to bring prices closer to the desired level. Specifically, the government will redistribute 50 percent of EDF’s additional profits if prices rise above €78-€80 per MWh, and 90 percent of extra profits if prices rise above €110 per MWh.

The move also marks a new step in the government's power grab at EDF, after the company was fully nationalized earlier this year.

For years, France has been discussing an EDF reform with the Commission in order to address concerns by Brussels regarding disguised state aid to the company. In particular, the Commission wanted assurances that any state aid given to nuclear would be kept separate from those parts of the business subject to competition, such as renewable energy development.

An economy ministry official close to Le Maire argued that the new pricing mechanism would settle matters with Brussels on that front. A Commission spokesperson said Brussels was in contact with France on the file, but declined further comment.

The mechanism will replace the existing EU-mandated energy pricing mechanism, dubbed ARENH, which was set to expire at the end of 2025, and which has forced EDF to sell some of its electricity to competitors at a fixed low price since 2010, and comes amid contested electricity market reforms at EU level.

The new system could benefit EDF because it won't be bound to sell energy at a lower price, but instead will be allowed to auction off its energy to competitors. On the other hand, the redistribution system would deprive the company of some profits when electricity prices are higher. No wonder, then, that negotiations between the government and EDF have been "difficult," as Le Maire put it.

Related News

• Electricity Forum News

• Energy Policy News

European Green Deal Electrification accelerates decarbonization via renewables, electric vehicles, heat pumps, and clean industry, backed by sustainable finance, EIB green lending, just transition funds, and energy taxation reform to phase out fossil fuels.

Key Points

An EU plan to replace fossil fuels with renewable electricity in transport, buildings, and industry, supported by green finance.

✅ Doubles electricity's share to cut CO2 and phase out fossil fuels.

✅ Drives EVs, heat pumps, and electrified industry via renewables.

✅ Funded by EIB lending, EU budget, and just transition support.

The European Union is preparing an ambitious plan to completely decarbonize by 2050. Increasing the share of electricity in Europe’s energy system – electricity that will increasingly come from renewable sources - will be at the center of this strategy, aligning with the broader global energy transition under way, the new head of the European Commission’s energy department said yesterday.

This will mean more electric cars, electric heating and electric industry. The idea is that fossil fuels should no longer be a primary energy source, heating homes, warming food or powering cars. In the medium term they should only be used to generate electricity, a shift mirrored by New Zealand's electricity shift efforts, which then powers these things, resulting in less CO2 emissions.

“First assessments show we need to double the share of electricity in energy consumption by 2050,” Ditte Juul-Jørgensen said at an event in Brussels this week, a goal echoed by recent calls to double investment in power systems from world leaders. “We’ve already seen an increase in the last decade, but we need to go further”.

Juul-Jørgensen, who started in her job as director-general of the commission’s energy department in August, has come to the role at a pivotal time for energy. The 2050 decarbonization proposal from the Commission, the EU’s executive branch, is expected to be approved next month by EU national leaders. A veto from Poland that has blocked adoption until now is likely to be overcome if Poland and other Eastern European countries are offered financial assistance from a “just transition fund”, according to EU sources.

Ursula von der Leyen, the incoming President of the Commission, has promised to unveil a “European Green Deal” in her first 100 days in office designed to get the EU to its 2050 goal. Juul-Jørgensen will be working with the incoming EU Energy Commissioner, Kadri Simson, on designing this complex strategy. The overall aim will be to phase out fossil fuels, and increase the use of electricity from green sources, amid trends like oil majors pivoting to electric across Europe today.

“This will be about how do we best make use of electricity to feed into other sectors,” Juul-Jørgensen said. “We need to think about transforming it into other sources, and how to best transport it.”

“But the biggest challenge from what I see today is that of investment and finance - the changes we have to make are very significant.”

Financing problems

The Commission is going to try to tackle the challenges of financing the energy transition with two tools: dedicated climate funding in the EU budget, and dedicated climate lending from the European Investment Bank.

“The EIB will play an increasing role in future. We hope to see agreement [with the EIB board] on that in the coming months so there’s a clear operator in the EIB to support the green transition. We’re looking at something around €400 billion a year.”

The Commission’s proposed dedicated climate spending in the next seven-year budget must still be approved by the 28 EU national governments. Juul-Jørgensen said there is unanimous agreement on the amount: 25% of the budget. But there is disagreement about how to determine what is green spending.

“A lot of work has been ongoing to ensure that when it comes to counting it reflects the reality of the investments,” she said. “We’re working on the taxonomy on sustainable finance - internally identifying sectors contributing to overall climate objectives.”

Electricity pact

Juul-Jørgensen was speaking at an event organized by the the Electrification Alliance, a pact between nine industry organizations to lobby for electricity to be put at the heart of the European green deal. They signed a declaration at the event calling for a variety of measures to be included in the green deal, reflecting debates over a fully renewable grid by 2030 in other jurisdictions, including a change to the EU’s energy taxation regime which incentivizes a switch from fossil fuel to electricity consumption.

“Electrification is the most important solution to turn the vision of a fossil-free Europe into reality,” said Laurence Tubiana, CEO of the European Climate Foundation, one of the signatories, and co-architect of the Paris Agreement.

“We are determined to deliver, but we must be mindful of the different starting points and secure sufficient financing to ensure a fair transition”, said Magnus Hall, President of electricity industry association Eurelectric, another signatory.

The energy taxation issue has been particularly tricky for the EU, since any change in taxation rules requires the unanimous consent of all 28 EU countries. But experts say that current taxation structures are subsidizing fossil fuels and punishing electricity, as recent UK net zero policy changes illustrate, and unless this is changed the European Green Deal can have little effect.

“Yes this issue will be addressed in the incoming commission once it takes up its function,” Juul-Jørgensen said in response to an audience question. “We all know the challenge - the unanimity requirement in the Council - and so I hope that member states will agree to the direction of work and the need to address energy taxation systems to make sure they’re consistent with the targets we’ve set ourselves.”

But some are concerned that the transformation envisioned by the green deal will have negative impacts on some of the most vulnerable members of society, including those who work in the fossil fuel sector.

This week the Centre on Regulation in Europe sent an open letter to Frans Timmermans, the Commission Vice President in charge of climate, warning that they need to be mindful of distributional effects. These worries have been heightened by the yellow vest protests in France, which were sparked by French President Emmanuel Macron’s attempt to increase fuel taxes for non-electric cars.

“The effectiveness of climate action and sustainability policies will be challenged by increasing social and political pressures,” wrote Máximo Miccinilli, the center’s director for energy. “If not properly addressed, those will enhance further populist movements that undermine trust in governance and in the public institutions.”

Miccinilli suggests that more research be done into identifying, quantifying and addressing distributional effects before new policies are put in place to phase out fossil fuels. He proposes launching a new European Observatory for Distributional Effects of the Energy Transition to deal with this.

EU national leaders are expected to vote on the 2050 decarbonization target, building on member-state plans such as Spain's 100% renewable electricity goal by mid-century, at a summit in Brussels on December 12, and Von der Leyen will likely unveil her European Green Deal in March.

Related News

• Electricity Forum News

• Climate Change News

Renewable Energy Breakthroughs drive quantum dots solar efficiency, Air-gen protein nanowires harvesting humidity, and cellulose membranes for flow batteries, enabling printable photovoltaics, 24/7 clean power, and low-cost grid storage at commercial scale.

Key Points

Advances like quantum dot solar, Air-gen, and cellulose flow battery membranes that improve clean power and storage.

✅ Quantum dots raise solar conversion efficiency, are printable

✅ Air-gen harvests electricity from humidity with protein nanowires

✅ Cellulose membranes cut flow battery costs, aid grid storage

Science never sleeps. The quest to find new and better ways to do things continues in thousands of laboratories around the world. Today, the global economy is based on the use of electricity, and one analysis shows wind and solar potential could meet 80% of US demand, underscoring what is possible. If there was a way to harness all the energy from the sun that falls on the Earth every day, there would be enough of electricity available to meet the needs of every man, woman, and child on the planet with plenty left over. That day is getting closer all the time. Here are three reasons why.

Quantum Dots Make Better Solar Panels
According to Science Daily, researchers at the University of Queensland have set a new world record for the conversion of solar energy to electricity using quantum dots — which pass electrons between one another and generate electrical current when exposed to solar energy in a solar cell device. The solar devices they developed have beaten the existing solar conversion record by 25%.

“Conventional solar technologies use rigid, expensive materials. The new class of quantum dots the university has developed are flexible and printable,” says professor Lianzhou Wang, who leads the research team. “This opens up a huge range of potential applications, including the possibility to use it as a transparent skin to power cars, planes, homes and wearable technology. Eventually it could play a major part in meeting the United Nations’ goal to increase the share of renewable energy in the global energy mix.”

“This new generation of quantum dots is compatible with more affordable and large-scale printable technologies,” he adds. “The near 25% improvement in efficiency we have achieved over the previous world record is important. It is effectively the difference between quantum dot solar cell technology being an exciting prospect and being commercially viable.” The research was published on January 20 in the journal Nature Energy.

Electricity From Thin Air
Science Daily also reports that researchers at UMass Amherst also have interesting news. They claim they created a device called an Air-gen, short for air powered generator. (Note: recently we reported on other research that makes electricity from rainwater.) The device uses protein nanowires created by a microbe called Geobacter. Those nanowires can generate electricity from thin air by tapping the water vapor present naturally in the atmosphere. “We are literally making electricity out of thin air. The Air-gen generates clean energy 24/7. It’s the most amazing and exciting application of protein nanowires yet,” researchers Jun Yao and Derek Lovely say. There work was published February 17 in the journal Nature.

The new technology developed in Yao’s lab is non-polluting, renewable, and low-cost. It can generate power even in areas with extremely low humidity such as the Sahara Desert. It has significant advantages over other forms of renewable energy including solar and wind, Lovley says, because unlike these other renewable energy sources, the Air-gen does not require sunlight or wind, and “it even works indoors,” a point underscored by ongoing grid challenges that slow full renewable adoption.

Yao says, “The ultimate goal is to make large-scale systems. For example, the technology might be incorporated into wall paint that could help power your home. Or, we may develop stand-alone air-powered generators that supply electricity off the grid, and in parallel others are advancing bio-inspired fuel cells that could complement such devices. Once we get to an industrial scale for wire production, I fully expect that we can make large systems that will make a major contribution to sustainable energy production. This is just the beginning of a new era of protein based electronic devices.”

Improved Membranes For Flow Batteries From Cellulose
Storing energy is almost as important to decarbonizing the environment as making it in the first place, with the rise of affordable solar batteries improving integration.  There are dozens if not hundreds of ways to store electricity and they all work to one degree or another. The difference between which ones are commercially viable and ones that are not often comes down to money.

Flow batteries — one approach among many, including fuel cells for renewable storage — use two liquid electrolytes — one positively charged and one negatively charged — separated by a membrane that allows electrons to pass back and forth between them. The problem is, the liquids are highly corrosive. The membranes used today are expensive — more than $1,300 per square meter.

Phys.org reports that Hongli Zhu, an assistant professor of mechanical and industrial engineering at Northeastern University, has successfully created a membrane for use in flow batteries that is made from cellulose and costs just $147.68 per square meter. Reducing the cost of something by 90% is the kind of news that gets people knocking on your door.

The membrane uses nanocrystals derived from cellulose in combination with a polymer known as polyvinylidene fluoride-hexafluoropropylene.  The naturally derived membrane is especially efficient because its cellular structure contains thousands of hydroxyl groups, which involve bonds of hydrogen and oxygen that make it easy for water to be transported in plants and trees.

In flow batteries, that molecular makeup speeds the transport of protons as they flow through the membrane. “For these materials, one of the challenges is that it is difficult to find a polymer that is proton conductive and that is also a material that is very stable in the flowing acid,” Zhu says.

Cellulose can be extracted from natural sources including algae, solid waste, and bacteria. “A lot of material in nature is a composite, and if we disintegrate its components, we can use it to extract cellulose,” Zhu says. “Like waste from our yard, and a lot of solid waste that we don’t always know what to do with.”

Flow batteries can store large amounts of electricity over long periods of time — provided the membrane between the storage tanks doesn’t break down. To store more electricity, simply make the tanks larger, which makes them ideal for grid storage applications where there is often plenty of room to install them. Slashing the cost of the membrane will make them much more attractive to renewable energy developers and help move the clean energy revolution forward.

The Takeaway
The fossil fuel crazies won’t give up easily. They have too much to lose and couldn’t care less if life on Earth ceases to exist for a few million years, just so long as they get to profit from their investments. But they are experiencing a death of a thousand cuts. None of the breakthroughs discussed above will end thermal power generation all by itself, but all of them, together with hundreds more just like them happening every day, every week, and every month, even as we confront clean energy's hidden costs across supply chains, are slowly writing the epitaph for fossil fuels.

And here’s a further note. A person of Chinese ancestry is the leader of all three research efforts reported on above. These are precisely the people being targeted by the United States government at the moment as it ratchets up its war on immigrants and anybody who cannot trace their ancestry to northern Europe. Imagine for a moment what will happen to America when researchers like them depart for countries where they are welcome instead of despised. 

Related News

• Electricity Forum News

• Renewable Energy News

Ontario Teachers SSEN Transmission Investment advances UK renewable energy, with a 25% minority stake in SSE plc's electricity transmission network, backing offshore wind, grid expansion, and Net Zero 2050 goals across Scotland and UK.

Key Points

A 25% stake by Ontario Teachers in SSE's SSEN Transmission to fund UK grid upgrades and accelerate renewables.

✅ £1,465m cash for 25% minority stake in SSEN Transmission

✅ Supports offshore wind, grid expansion, and Net Zero targets

✅ Partnering SSE plc to deliver clean, affordable power in the UK

Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan Board (‘Ontario Teachers’) has reached an agreement with Scotland-based energy provider SSE plc (‘SSE’) to acquire a 25% minority stake in its electricity transmission network business, SSEN Transmission, to provide clean, affordable renewable energy to millions of homes and businesses across the UK, reflecting how clean-energy generation powers both the economy and the environment.

The transaction is based on an effective economic date of 31 March 2022, and total cash proceeds of £1,465m for the 25% stake are expected at completion. The transaction is expected to complete shortly.

Measures such as Ontario's 2021 electricity rate reductions have aimed to ease costs for businesses, informing broader discussions on affordability.

SSEN Transmission, which operates under its licenced entity, Scottish Hydro Electric Transmission plc, transports electricity generated from renewable resources – including onshore and offshore wind and hydro – from the north of Scotland across more than a quarter of the UK land mass amid scrutiny of UK electricity and gas networks profits under the regulatory regime. The investment by Ontario Teachers’ will help support the UK Government’s Net Zero 2050 targets, including the delivery of 50GW of offshore wind capacity by 2030.

Charles Thomazi, Senior Managing Director, Head of EMEA Infrastructure & Natural Resources, from Ontario Teachers’ said, noting that in Canada decisions like the OEB decision on Hydro One's T&D rates guide utility planning:

“SSEN Transmission is one of Europe’s fastest growing transmission networks. Its network stretches across some of the most challenging terrain in Scotland – from the North Sea and across the Highlands – to deliver safe, reliable, renewable energy to demand centres across the UK.

We’re delighted to partner again with SSE and are committed to supporting the growth of its network and the vital role it plays in the UK’s green energy revolution.”

Investor views on regulated utilities can diverge, as illustrated by analyses of Hydro One's investment outlook that weigh uncertainties and risk factors.

Rob McDonald, Managing Director of SSEN Transmission, said:

“With the north of Scotland home to the UK’s greatest resources of renewable electricity we have a critical role to play in helping deliver the UK and Scottish Governments net zero commitments.  Our investments will also be key to securing the UK’s future energy independence through enabling the deployment of homegrown, affordable, low carbon power.

“With significant growth forecast in transmission, bringing in Ontario Teachers’ as a minority stake partner will help fund our ambitious investment plans as we continue to deliver a network for net zero emissions across the north of Scotland.” 

Ontario Teachers’ Infrastructure & Natural Resources group invests in electricity infrastructure worldwide to accelerate the energy transition with current investments including Caruna, Finland’s largest electricity distributor, Evoltz, a leading electricity transmission platform in Brazil, and Spark Infrastructure, which invests in essential energy infrastructure in Australia to serve over 5 million homes and businesses.

In Ontario, distribution consolidation has included the sale of Peterborough Distribution to Hydro One for $105 million, illustrating ongoing sector realignment.

Related News

• Electricity Forum News

• T&D Business News

Israel Electricity Reform Competition opens the supply segment to private suppliers, challenges IEC price controls, and promises consumer choice, marginal discounts, and market liberalization amid natural gas generation and infrastructure remaining with IEC.

Key Points

Policy opening 40% of supply to private vendors, enabling consumer choice and small discounts while IEC retains the grid.

✅ 40% of retail supply opened to private electricity suppliers

✅ IEC keeps meters, lines; tariffs still regulated by the authority

✅ Expected discounts near 7%, not dramatic price cuts initially

"See the pseudo-reform in the electricity sector: no lower prices, no opening the market to competition, and no choice of electricity suppliers, with a high rate for consumers despite natural gas." This is an advertisement by the Private Power Producers Forum that is appearing everywhere: Facebook, the Internet, billboards, and the press.

Is it possible that the biggest reform in the economy with a cost estimated by Israel Electric Corporation (IEC) (TASE: ELEC.B22) at NIS 7 billion is really a pseudo-reform? In contrast to the assertions by the private electricity producers, who are supposedly worried about our wallets and want to bring down the cost of electricity for us, the reform will open a segment of electricity supply to competition, as agreed in the final discussions about the reform. No less than 40% of this segment will be removed from IEC's exclusive responsibility and pass to private hands.

This means that in the not-too-distant future, one million households in Israel will be able to choose between different electricity suppliers. IEC will retain the infrastructure, with its meter and power lines, but for the first time, the supplier who sends the monthly bill to our home can be a private concern.

Up until now, the only regulatory agency determining the electricity rate in Israel was the Public Utilities Authority (electricity), i.e. the state. Now, in the framework of the reform, as a result of opening the supply segment to competition, private electricity producers will be able to offer a lower rate than IEC's, with mechanisms like electricity auctions shown to cut costs in some markets, while IEC's rate will still be controlled by the Public Utilities Authority (electricity).

This situation differs from the situation in almost all European countries, where the electricity market is fully open to competition and the EU is pursuing an electricity market revamp to address pricing challenges, with no electricity price controls and free switching by consumers between electricity producers, just as in the mobile phone market. This measure has not lowered electricity prices in Europe, where rates are higher than in Israel, which is in the bottom third of OECD countries in its electricity rate.

Regardless of reports, supply will be opened to competition and we will be able to choose between electricity suppliers in the future. Are the private electricity producers nevertheless right when they say that the electricity sector will not be opened to "real competition"?

What is obviously necessary is for the private producers to offer a substantially lower rate than IEC in order to attract as many new customers as possible and win their trust. Can the private producers offer a significantly lower rate than IEC? The answer is no, at least not in the near future. The teams handling the negotiations are aware of this. "The private supplier's price will not be significantly cheaper than IEC's controlled price; there will be marginal discounts," a senior government source explains. "What is involved here is another electricity intermediary, so it will not contribute to competition and lowering the price," he added.

There are already private electricity producers supplying electricity to large business customers - factories, shopping malls, and so forth - at a 7% discount. The rest of the electricity that they produce is sold to the system manager. When supply is opened to competition, it can be assumed that the private suppliers will also be able to offer a similar discount to private consumers.

Will a 7% discount cause a home consumer to leave reliable and familiar IEC for a private producer, given evidence from retail electricity competition in other markets? This is hard to know.

#google#

Why cannot private electricity producers offer a larger discount that will really break the monopoly, as their advertisement says they want to do? Chen Herzog, chief economist and partner at BDO Consulting, which is advising the Private Power Producers Forum, says, "Competition in supply requires the construction of competitive power plants that can compete and offer cheaper electricity.

"The power plants that IEC will sell in the reform, which will go on selling electricity to IEC, are outmoded, inefficient, and non-competitive. In addition, the producer will have to continue employing IEC workers in the purchased plants for at least five years. The producer will generate electricity in IEC power stations with IEC employees and additional overhead of a private producer, with factors such as cost allocation further shaping end-user rates. This amounts to being an IEC subcontractor in production. There is no saving on costs, so there will be no surplus to deduct from the consumer price," he adds.

The idea of opening supply to electricity market competition on such a large scale sounds promising, but saving on electricity for consumers still looks a long way off.

Related News

• Electricity Forum News

• Energy Policy News

2022 US Renewable Power Milestone highlights EIA data: wind and solar outpaced coal and nuclear, hydropower contributed, with falling levelized costs, grid integration, battery storage, and transmission upgrades shaping affordable, reliable clean power growth.

Key Points

The year US renewables, led by wind and solar, generated more power than coal and nuclear, per EIA.

✅ Wind and solar rose; levelized costs fell 70%-90% over decade

✅ Renewables surpassed coal and nuclear in 2022 per EIA

✅ Grid needs storage and transmission to manage intermittency

Electricity generated from renewables surpassed coal in the United States for the first time in 2022, as wind and solar surpassed coal nationwide, the U.S. Energy Information Administration has announced.

Renewables also surpassed nuclear generation in 2022 after first doing so last year, and wind and solar together generated more electricity than nuclear for the first time in the United States.

Growth in wind and solar significantly drove the increase in renewable energy and contributed 14% of the electricity produced domestically in 2022, with solar producing about 4.7% of U.S. power overall. Hydropower contributed 6%, and biomass and geothermal sources generated less than 1%.

“I’m happy to see we’ve crossed that threshold, but that is only a step in what has to be a very rapid and much cheaper journey,” said Stephen Porder, a professor of ecology and assistant provost for sustainability at Brown University.

California produced 26% of the national utility-scale solar electricity followed by Texas with 16% and North Carolina with 8%.

The most wind generation occurred in Texas, which accounted for 26% of the U.S. total, while wind is now the most-used renewable electricity source nationwide, followed by Iowa (10%) and Oklahoma (9%).

“This booming growth is driven largely by economics,” said Gregory Wetstone, president and CEO of the American Council on Renewable Energy, as renewables became the second-most prevalent U.S. electricity source in 2020 nationwide. “Over the past decade, the levelized cost of wind energy declined by 70 percent, while the levelized cost of solar power has declined by an even more impressive 90 percent.”

“Renewable energy is now the most affordable source of new electricity in much of the country,” added Wetstone.

The Energy Information Administration projected that the wind share of the U.S. electricity generation mix will increase from 11% to 12% from 2022 to 2023 and that solar will grow from 4% to 5% during the period, and renewables hit a record 28% share in April according to recent data. The natural gas share is expected to remain at 39% from 2022 to 2023, and coal is projected to decline from 20% last year to 17% this year.

“Wind and solar are going to be the backbone of the growth in renewables, but whether or not they can provide 100% of the U.S. electricity without backup is something that engineers are debating,” said Brown University’s Porder.

Many decisions lie ahead, he said, as the proportion of renewables that supply the energy grid increases, with renewables projected to soon be one-fourth of U.S. electricity generation over the near term.

This presents challenges for engineers and policy-makers, Porder said, because existing energy grids were built to deliver power from a consistent source. Renewables such as solar and wind generate power intermittently. So battery storage, long-distance transmission and other steps will be needed to help address these challenges, he said.

Related News

• Electricity Forum News

• Renewable Energy News