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Brain Stimulation is transforming neuromodulation, from TMS and DBS to closed loop devices, targeting neural circuits for addiction, depression, Parkinsons, epilepsy, and chronic pain, powered by advanced imaging, AI analytics, and the NIH BRAIN Initiative.

Key Points

Brain stimulation uses pulses to modulate neural circuits, easing symptoms in depression, Parkinsons, and epilepsy.

✅ Noninvasive TMS and invasive DBS modulate specific brain circuits

✅ Closed loop systems adapt stimulation via real time biomarker detection

✅ Emerging uses: addiction, depression, Parkinsons, epilepsy, chronic pain

In June 2015, biology professor Colleen Hanlon went to a conference on drug dependence. As she met other researchers and wandered around a glitzy Phoenix resort’s conference rooms to learn about the latest work on therapies for drug and alcohol use disorders, she realized that out of the 730 posters, there were only two on brain stimulation as a potential treatment for addiction — both from her own lab at Wake Forest School of Medicine.

Just four years later, she would lead 76 researchers on four continents in writing a consensus article about brain stimulation as an innovative tool for addiction. And in 2020, the Food and Drug Administration approved a transcranial magnetic stimulation device to help patients quit smoking, a milestone for substance use disorders.

Brain stimulation is booming. Hanlon can attend entire conferences devoted to the study of what electrical currents do—including how targeted stimulation can improve short-term memory in older adults—to the intricate networks of highways and backroads that make up the brain’s circuitry. This expanding field of research is slowly revealing truths of the brain: how it works, how it malfunctions, and how electrical impulses, precisely targeted and controlled, might be used to treat psychiatric and neurological disorders.

In the last half-dozen years, researchers have launched investigations into how different forms of neuromodulation affect addiction, depression, loss-of-control eating, tremor, chronic pain, obsessive compulsive disorder, Parkinson’s disease, epilepsy, and more. Early studies have shown subtle electrical jolts to certain brain regions could disrupt circuit abnormalities — the miscommunications — that are thought to underlie many brain diseases, and help ease symptoms that persist despite conventional treatments.

The National Institute of Health’s massive BRAIN Initiative put circuits front and center, distributing $2.4 billion to researchers since 2013 to devise and use new tools to observe interactions between brain cells and circuits. That, in turn, has kindled interest from the private sector. Among the advances that have enhanced our understanding of how distant parts of the brain talk with one another are new imaging technology and the use of machine learning, much as utilities use AI to adapt to shifting electricity demand, to interpret complex brain signals and analyze what happens when circuits go haywire.

Still, the field is in its infancy, and even therapies that have been approved for use in patients with, for example, Parkinson’s disease or epilepsy, help only a minority of patients, and in a world where electricity drives pandemic readiness expectations can outpace evidence. “If it was the Bible, it would be the first chapter of Genesis,” said Michael Okun, executive director of the Norman Fixel Institute for Neurological Diseases at University of Florida Health.

As brain stimulation evolves, researchers face daunting hurdles, and not just scientific ones. How will brain stimulation become accessible to all the patients who need it, given how expensive and invasive some treatments are? Proving to the FDA that brain stimulation works, and does so safely, is complicated and expensive. Even with a swell of scientific momentum and an influx of funding, the agency has so far cleared brain stimulation for only a handful of limited conditions. Persuading insurers to cover the treatments is another challenge altogether. And outside the lab, researchers are debating nascent issues, such as the ethics of mind control, the privacy of a person’s brain data—concerns that echo efforts to develop algorithms to prevent blackouts during rising ransomware threats—and how to best involve patients in the study of the human brain’s far-flung regions.

Neurologist Martha Morrell is optimistic about the future of brain stimulation. She remembers the shocked reactions of her colleagues in 2004 when she left full-time teaching at Stanford (she still has a faculty appointment as a clinical professor of neurology) to direct clinical trials at NeuroPace, then a young company making neurostimulator systems to potentially treat epilepsy patients.

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“When I started working on this, everybody thought I was insane,” said Morrell. Nearly 20 years in, she sees a parallel between the story of jolting the brain’s circuitry and that of early implantable cardiac devices, such as pacemakers and defibrillators, which initially “were used as a last option, where all other medications have failed.” Now, “the field of cardiology is very comfortable incorporating electrical therapy, device therapy, into routine care. And I think that’s really where we’re going with neurology as well.”

Reaching a ‘slope of enlightenment’
Parkinson’s is, in some ways, an elder in the world of modern brain stimulation, and it shows the potential as well as the limitations of the technology. Surgeons have been implanting electrodes deep in the brains of Parkinson’s patients since the late 1990s, and in people with more advanced disease since the early 2000s.

In that time, it’s gone through the “hype cycle,” said Okun, the national medical adviser to the Parkinson’s Foundation since 2006. Feverish excitement and overinflated expectations have given way to reality, bringing scientists to a “slope of enlightenment,” he said. They have found deep brain stimulation to be very helpful for some patients with Parkinson’s, rendering them almost symptom-free by calming the shaking and tremors that medications couldn’t. But it doesn’t stop the progression of the disease, or resolve some of the problems patients with advanced Parkinson’s have walking, talking, and thinking.

In 2015, the same year Hanlon found only her lab’s research on brain stimulation at the addiction conference, Kevin O’Neill watched one finger on his left hand start doing something “funky.” One finger twitched, then two, then his left arm started tingling and a feeling appeared in his right leg, like it was about to shake but wouldn’t — a tremor.

“I was assuming it was anxiety,” O’Neill, 62, told STAT. He had struggled with anxiety before, and he had endured a stressful year: a separation, selling his home, starting a new job at a law firm in California’s Bay Area. But a year after his symptoms first began, O’Neill was diagnosed with Parkinson’s.

In the broader energy context, California has increasingly turned to battery storage to stabilize its strained grid.

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Doctors prescribed him pills that promote the release of dopamine, to offset the death of brain cells that produce this messenger molecule in circuits that control movement. But he took them infrequently because he worried about insomnia as a side effect. Walking became difficult — “I had to kind of think my left leg into moving” — and the labor lawyer found it hard to give presentations and travel to clients’ offices.

A former actor with an outgoing personality, he developed social anxiety and didn’t tell his bosses about his diagnosis for three years, and wouldn’t have, if not for two workdays in summer 2018 when his tremors were severe and obvious.

O’Neill’s tremors are all but gone since he began deep brain stimulation last May, though his left arm shakes when he feels tense.

It was during that period that he learned about deep brain stimulation, at a support group for Parkinson’s patients. “I thought, ‘I will never let anybody fuss with my brain. I’m not going to be a candidate for that,’” he recalled. “It felt like mad scientist science fiction. Like, are you kidding me?”

But over time, the idea became less radical, as O’Neill spoke to DBS patients and doctors and did his own research, and as his symptoms worsened. He decided to go for it. Last May, doctors at the University of California, San Francisco surgically placed three metal leads into his brain, connected by thin cords to two implants in his chest, just near the clavicles. A month later, he went into the lab and researchers turned the device on.

“That was a revelation that day,” he said. “You immediately — literally, immediately — feel the efficacy of these things. … You go from fully symptomatic to non-symptomatic in seconds.”

When his nephew pulled up to the curb to pick him up, O’Neill started dancing, and his nephew teared up. The following day, O’Neill couldn’t wait to get out of bed and go out, even if it was just to pick up his car from the repair shop.

In the year since, O’Neill’s walking has gone from “awkward and painful” to much improved, and his tremors are all but gone. When he is extra frazzled, like while renovating and moving into his new house overlooking the hills of Marin County, he feels tense and his left arm shakes and he worries the DBS is “failing,” but generally he returns to a comfortable, tremor-free baseline.

O’Neill worried about the effects of DBS wearing off but, for now, he can think “in terms of decades, instead of years or months,” he recalled his neurologist telling him. “The fact that I can put away that worry was the big thing.”

He’s just one patient, though. The brain has regions that are mostly uniform across all people. The functions of those regions also tend to be the same. But researchers suspect that how brain regions interact with one another — who mingles with whom, and what conversation they have — and how those mixes and matches cause complex diseases varies from person to person. So brain stimulation looks different for each patient.

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Each case of Parkinson’s manifests slightly differently, and that’s a bit of knowledge that applies to many other diseases, said Okun, who organized the nine-year-old Deep Brain Stimulation Think Tank, where leading researchers convene, review papers, and publish reports on the field’s progress each year.

“I think we’re all collectively coming to the realization that these diseases are not one-size-fits-all,” he said. “We have to really begin to rethink the entire infrastructure, the schema, the framework we start with.”

Brain stimulation is also used frequently to treat people with common forms of epilepsy, and has reduced the number of seizures or improved other symptoms in many patients. Researchers have also been able to collect high-quality data about what happens in the brain during a seizure — including identifying differences between epilepsy types. Still, only about 15% of patients are symptom-free after treatment, according to Robert Gross, a neurosurgery professor at Emory University in Atlanta.

“And that’s a critical difference for people with epilepsy. Because people who are symptom-free can drive,” which means they can get to a job in a place like Georgia, where there is little public transit, he said. So taking neuromodulation “from good to great,” is imperative, Gross said.

Renaissance for an ancient idea
Recent advances are bringing about what Gross sees as “almost a renaissance period” for brain stimulation, though the ideas that undergird the technology are millenia old. Neuromodulation goes back to at least ancient Egypt and Greece, when electrical shocks from a ray, called the “torpedo fish,” were recommended as a treatment for headache and gout. Over centuries, the fish zaps led to doctors burning holes into the brains of patients. Those “lesions” worked, somehow, but nobody could explain why they alleviated some patients’ symptoms, Okun said.

Perhaps the clearest predecessor to today’s technology is electroconvulsive therapy (ECT), which in a rudimentary and dangerous way began being used on patients with depression roughly 100 years ago, said Nolan Williams, director of the Brain Stimulation Lab at Stanford University.

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More modern forms of brain stimulation came about in the United States in the mid-20th century. A common, noninvasive approach is transcranial magnetic stimulation, which involves placing an electromagnetic coil on the scalp to transmit a current into the outermost layer of the brain. Vagus nerve stimulation (VNS), used to treat epilepsy, zaps a nerve that contributes to some seizures.

The most invasive option, deep brain stimulation, involves implanting in the skull a device attached to electrodes embedded in deep brain regions, such as the amygdala, that can’t be reached with other stimulation devices. In 1997, the FDA gave its first green light to deep brain stimulation as a treatment for tremor, and then for Parkinson’s in 2002 and the movement disorder dystonia in 2003.

Even as these treatments were cleared for patients, though, what was happening in the brain remained elusive. But advanced imaging tools now let researchers peer into the brain and map out networks — a recent breakthrough that researchers say has propelled the field of brain stimulation forward as much as increased funding has, paralleling broader efforts to digitize analog electrical systems across industry. Imaging of both human brains and animal models has helped researchers identify the neuroanatomy of diseases, target brain regions with more specificity, and watch what was happening after electrical stimulation.

Another key step has been the shift from open-loop stimulation — a constant stream of electricity — to closed-loop stimulation that delivers targeted, brief jolts in response to a symptom trigger. To make use of the futuristic technology, labs need people to develop artificial intelligence tools, informed by advances in machine learning for the energy transition, to interpret large data sets a brain implant is generating, and to tailor devices based on that information.

“We’ve needed to learn how to be data scientists,” Morrell said.

Affinity groups, like the NIH-funded Open Mind Consortium, have formed to fill that gap. Philip Starr, a neurosurgeon and developer of implantable brain devices at the University of California at San Francisco Health system, leads the effort to teach physicians how to program closed-loop devices, and works to create ethical standards for their use. “There’s been extraordinary innovation after 20 years of no innovation,” he said.

The BRAIN Initiative has been critical, several researchers told STAT. “It’s been a godsend to us,” Gross said. The NIH’s Brain Research through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies (BRAIN) Initiative was launched in 2013 during the Obama administration with a $50 million budget. BRAIN now spends over $500 million per year. Since its creation, BRAIN has given over 1,100 awards, according to NIH data. Part of the initiative’s purpose is to pair up researchers with medical technology companies that provide human-grade stimulation devices to the investigators. Nearly three dozen projects have been funded through the investigator-devicemaker partnership program and through one focused on new implantable devices for first-in-human use, according to Nick Langhals, who leads work on neurological disorders at the initiative.

The more BRAIN invests, the more research is spawned. “We learn more about what circuits are involved … which then feeds back into new and more innovative projects,” he said.

Many BRAIN projects are still in early stages, finishing enrollment or small feasibility studies, Langhals said. Over the next couple of years, scientists will begin to see some of the fruits of their labor, which could lead to larger clinical trials, or to companies developing more refined brain stimulation implants, Langhals said.

Money from the National Institutes of Mental Health, as well as the NIH’s Helping to End Addiction Long-term (HEAL), has similarly sweetened the appeal of brain stimulation, both for researchers and industry. “A critical mass” of companies interested in neuromodulation technology has mushroomed where, for two decades, just a handful of companies stood, Starr said.

More and more, pharmaceutical and digital health companies are looking at brain stimulation devices “as possible products for their future,” said Linda Carpenter, director of the Butler Hospital TMS Clinic and Neuromodulation Research Facility.

‘Psychiatry 3.0’
The experience with using brain stimulation to stop tremors and seizures inspired psychiatrists to begin exploring its use as a potentially powerful therapy for healing, or even getting ahead of, mental illness.

In 2008, the FDA approved TMS for patients with major depression who had tried, and not gotten relief from, drug therapy. “That kind of opened the door for all of us,” said Hanlon, a professor and researcher at the Center for Research on Substance Use and Addiction at Wake Forest School of Medicine. The last decade saw a surge of research into how TMS could be used to reset malfunctioning brain circuits involved in anxiety, depression, obsessive-compulsive disorder, and other conditions.

“We’re certainly entering into what a lot of people are calling psychiatry 3.0,” Stanford’s Williams said. “Whereas the first iteration was Freud and all that business, the second one was the psychopharmacology boom, and this third one is this bit around circuits and stimulation.”

Drugs alleviate some patients’ symptoms while simultaneously failing to help many others, but psychopharmacology clearly showed “there’s definitely a biology to this problem,” Williams said — a biology that in some cases may be more amenable to a brain stimulation.

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The exact mechanics of what happens between cells when brain circuits … well, short-circuit, is unclear. Researchers are getting closer to finding biomarkers that warn of an incoming depressive episode, or wave of anxiety, or loss of impulse control. Those brain signatures could be different for every patient. If researchers can find molecular biomarkers for psychiatric disorders — and find ways to preempt those symptoms by shocking particular brain regions — that would reshape the field, Williams said.

Not only would disease-specific markers help clinicians diagnose people, but they could help chip away at the stigma that paints mental illness as a personal or moral failing instead of a disease. That’s what happened for epilepsy in the 1960s, when scientific findings nudged the general public toward a deeper understanding of why seizures happen, and it’s “the same trajectory” Williams said he sees for depression.

His research at the Stanford lab also includes work on suicide, and obsessive-compulsive disorder, which the FDA said in 2018 could be treated using noninvasive TMS. Williams considers brain stimulation, with its instantaneity, to be a potential breakthrough for urgent psychiatric situations. Doctors know what to do when a patient is rushed into the emergency room with a heart attack or a stroke, but there is no immediate treatment for psychiatric emergencies, he said. Williams wonders: What if, in the future, a suicidal patient could receive TMS in the emergency room and be quickly pulled out of their depressive mental spiral?

Researchers are also actively investigating the brain biology of addiction. In August 2020, the FDA approved TMS for smoking cessation, the first such OK for a substance use disorder, which is “really exciting,” Hanlon said. Although there is some nuance when comparing substance use disorders, a primal mechanism generally defines addiction: the eternal competition between “top-down” executive control functions and “bottom-up” cravings. It’s the same process that is at work when one is deciding whether to eat another cookie or abstain — just exacerbated.

Hanlon is trying to figure out if the stop and go circuits are in the same place for all people, and whether neuromodulation should be used to strengthen top-down control or weaken bottom-up cravings. Just as brain stimulation can be used to disrupt cellular misfiring, it could also be a tool for reinforcing helpful brain functions, or for giving the addicted brain what it wants in order to curb substance use.

Evidence suggests many people with schizophrenia smoke cigarettes (a leading cause of early death for this population) because nicotine reduces the “hyperconnectivity” that characterizes the brains of people with the disease, said Heather Ward, a research fellow at Boston’s Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center. She suspects TMS could mimic that effect, and therefore reduce cravings and some symptoms of the disease, and she hopes to prove that in a pilot study that is now enrolling patients.

If the scientific evidence proves out, clinicians say brain stimulation could be used alongside behavioral therapy and drug-based therapy to treat substance use disorders. “In the end, we’re going to need all three to help people stay sober,” Hanlon said. “We’re adding another tool to the physician’s toolbox.”

Decoding the mysteries of pain
Afavorable outcome to the ongoing research, one that would fling the doors to brain stimulation wide open for patients with myriad disorders, is far from guaranteed. Chronic pain researchers know that firsthand.

Chronic pain, among the most mysterious and hard-to-study medical phenomena, was the first use for which the FDA approved deep brain stimulation, said Prasad Shirvalkar, an assistant professor of anesthesiology at UCSF. But when studies didn’t pan out after a year, the FDA retracted its approval.

Shirvalkar is working with Starr and neurosurgeon Edward Chang on a profoundly complex problem: “decoding pain in the brain states, which has never been done,” as Starr told STAT.

Part of the difficulty of studying pain is that there is no objective way to measure it. Much of what we know about pain is from rudimentary surveys that ask patients to rate how much they’re hurting, on a scale from zero to 10.

Using implantable brain stimulation devices, the researchers ask patients for a 0-to-10 rating of their pain while recording up-and-down cycles of activity in the brain. They then use machine learning to compare the two streams of information and see what brain activity correlates with a patient’s subjective pain experience. Implantable devices let researchers collect data over weeks and months, instead of basing findings on small snippets of information, allowing for a much richer analysis.

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Ontario electricity shortage is looming, RBC and IESO warn, as EV electrification surges, Pickering nuclear faces delays, and gas plants backstop expiring renewables, raising GHG emissions and grid reliability concerns across the province.

Key Points

A projected supply shortfall as demand rises from electrification, expiring contracts, and delayed nuclear capacity.

✅ RBC warns shortages as early as 2026, significant by 2030

✅ IESO sees EV-driven demand; 5,000-15,000 MW by 2035

✅ Gas reliance boosts GHGs; Pickering life extension assessed

In a fit of ideological pique, Doug Ford’s government spent more than $200 million to scrap more than 700 green energy projects soon after winning the 2018 election, amid calls to make clean, affordable power a central issue, portraying them as “unnecessary and expensive energy schemes.”

A year later, then Associate Energy Minister Bill Walker defended the decision, declaring, “Ontario has an adequate supply of power right now.”

Well, life moves fast. At the time, scrapping the renewable energy projects was criticized as short-sighted and wasteful, raising doubts about whether Ontario was embracing clean power in a meaningful way. It seems especially so now as Ontario confronts the reality of being short of electricity in the coming years.

How short? A recent report by RBC calls the situation “urgent,” saying that Canada’s most populous province could face energy shortages as early as 2026. As contracts for non-hydro renewables and gas plants expire, the shortages could be “significant” by 2030, the bank report said, with grid greening costs adding to the challenge.

The Independent Electricity System Operator (IESO), which manages the electrical supply in Ontario, says demand for electricity could rise at rates not seen in many years, as the government moves to add new gas plants to boost capacity. “Economic growth coming out of the pandemic, along with electrification in many sectors, is driving energy use up,” the agency said in a December assessment.

The good news is that demand is being driven, in part, by the transition to “green” power – carbon-emission-free electricity – by sectors such as transportation and manufacturing. That will help reduce emissions. Yet meeting that demand presents some challenges, prompting the province to outline a plan to address growing needs across the system. The shift to electric vehicles alone is expected to cause a spike in demand starting in 2030. By 2035, the province could need an additional 5,000 to 15,000 megawatts of electricity, the IESO estimates.

It was perhaps no surprise then to see the province announce last week that it wants to delay the long-planned closing of the Pickering nuclear plant by a year to 2026, even as others note the station is slated to close as planned. Operations beyond that would require refurbishing the facility. The province said it’s taking a fresh look at whether that would make sense to extend its life by another 30 years.

In the interim, the province will be forced to dramatically ramp up its reliance on natural gas plants for electricity generation – and, as analysts warn, Ontario’s power mix could get dirtier even before new non-emitting capacity is built, and in the process, increase greenhouse gas emissions from the energy grid by 400 per cent. Broader electrification is expected to produce “significant” GHG emissions reductions in Ontario over the next two decades, according to the IESO. Still, it’s working at cross-purposes if your electric car is charged by electricity generated by fossil fuels.

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Ontario Industrial Electricity Pricing Reforms aim to cut regulatory burden for industrial ratepayers through an energy concierge service, IESO billing reviews, GA estimation enhancements, clearer peak demand data, and contract cost savings.

Key Points

Measures to reduce industrial power costs via an energy concierge, IESO and GA reviews, and better peak demand data.

✅ Energy concierge eases pricing and connection inquiries

✅ IESO to simplify bills and refine GA estimation

✅ Real-time peak data and contract savings under review

Ontario's government is pursuing burden reduction measures for industrial electricity ratepayers, including legislation to lower rates to help businesses compete, and stimulate growth and investment.

Over the next year, Ontario will help industrial electricity ratepayers focus on their businesses instead of their electricity management practices by establishing an energy concierge service to provide businesses with better customer service and easier access to information about electricity pricing and changes for electricity consumers as well as connection processes.

Ontario is also tasking the Independent Electricity System Operator (IESO) to review and report back on its billing, settlement and customer service processes, building on initiatives such as electricity auctions that aim to reduce costs.

Improve and simplify industrial electricity bills, including clarifying the recovery rate that affects charges;

Review how the monthly Global Adjustment (GA) charge is estimated and identify potential enhancements related to cost allocation across classes; and,

Improve peak demand data publication processes and assess the feasibility of using real-time data to determine the factors that allocate GA costs to consumers.

Further, as part of the government's continued effort to finding efficiencies in the electricity system, Ontario is also directing IESO to review generation contracts to find opportunities for cost savings.

These measures are based on industry feedback received during extensive industrial electricity price consultations held between April and July 2019, which underscored how high electricity rates have impacted factories across the province.

"Our government is focused on finding workable electricity pricing solutions that will provide the greatest benefit to Ontario," said Greg Rickford, Minister of Energy, Northern Development and Mines. "Reducing regulatory burden on businesses can free up resources that can then be invested in areas such as training, new equipment and job creation."

The government is also in the process of developing further changes to industrial electricity pricing policy, amid planned rate increases announced by the OEB, informed by what was heard during the industrial electricity price consultations.

"It's important that we get this right the first time," said Minister Rickford. "That's why we're taking a thoughtful approach and listening carefully to what businesses in Ontario have to say."

Helping industrial ratepayers is part of the government's balanced and prudent plan to build Ontario together through ensuring our province is open for business and building a more transparent and accountable electricity system.

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Nuclear Power Resilience During COVID-19 shows low-carbon electricity supporting renewables integration with grid flexibility, reliability, and inertia, sustaining decarbonization, stable baseload, and system security while prices fell and demand dropped across markets.

Key Points

It shows nuclear plants providing reliable, low-carbon power and supporting grid stability despite demand declines.

✅ Low prices challenge investment; lifetime extensions are cost-effective.

✅ Nuclear provides inertia, reliability, and dispatchable capacity.

✅ Market reforms should reward flexibility and grid services.

The COVID-19 pandemic has transformed the operation of power systems across the globe, including European responses that many argue accelerated the transition, and offered a glimpse of a future electricity mix dominated by low carbon sources.

The performance of nuclear power, in particular, demonstrates how it can support the transition to a resilient, clean energy system well beyond the COVID-19 recovery phase, and its role in net-zero pathways is increasingly highlighted by analysts today.

Restrictions on economic and social activity during the COVID-19 outbreak have led to an unprecedented and sustained decline in demand for electricity in many countries, in the order of 10% or more relative to 2019 levels over a period of a few months, thereby creating challenging conditions for both electricity generators and system operators (Fig. 1). The recent Sustainable Recovery Report by the International Energy Agency (IEA) projects a 5% reduction in global electricity usage for the entire year 2020, with a record 5.7% decline foreseen in the United States alone. The sustainable economic recovery will be discussed at today's IEA Clean Energy Transitions Summit, where Fatih Birol's call to keep options open will be prominent as IAEA Director General Rafael Mariano Grossi participates.

Electricity generation from fossil fuels has been hard hit, due to relatively high operating costs compared to nuclear power and renewables, as well as simple price-setting mechanisms on electricity markets. By contrast, low-carbon electricity prevailed during these extraordinary circumstances, with the contribution of renewable electricity rising in a number of countries as analyses see renewables eclipsing coal by 2025, due to an obligation on transmission system operators to schedule and dispatch renewable electricity ahead of other generators, as well as due to favourable weather conditions.

Nuclear power generation also proved to be resilient, reliable and adaptable. The nuclear industry rapidly implemented special measures to cope with the pandemic, avoiding the need to shut down plants due to the effects of COVID-19 on the workforce or supply chains. Nuclear generators also swiftly adapted to the changed market conditions. For example, EDF Energy was able to respond to the need of the UK grid operator by curtailing sporadically the generation of its Sizewell B reactor and maintain a cost-efficient and secure electricity service for consumers.

Despite the nuclear industry's performance during the pandemic, faced with significant decreases in demand, many generators have still needed to reduce their overall output appreciably, for example in France, Sweden, Ukraine, the UK and to a lesser extent Germany (Fig. 2), even as the nuclear decline debate continues in Europe. Declining demand in France up to the end of March already contributed to a 1% drop in first quarter revenues at EDF, with nuclear output more than 9% lower than in the year before. Similarly, Russia's Rosatom experienced a significant demand contraction in April and May, contributing to an 11% decline in revenues for the first five months of the year.

Overall, the competitiveness and resilience of low carbon technologies have resulted in higher market shares for nuclear, solar and wind power in many countries since the start of lockdowns (Fig. 3), and low-emissions sources to meet demand growth over the next three years. The share of nuclear generation in South Korea rose by almost 9 percentage points during the pandemic, while in the UK, nuclear played a big part in almost eliminating coal generation for a period of two months. For the whole of 2020, the US Energy Information Administration's Short-Term Energy Outlook sees the share of nuclear generation increasing by more than one percentage point compared to 2019. In China, power production decreased during January-February 2020 by more than 8% year on year: coal power decreased by nearly 9%, hydropower by nearly 12%. Nuclear has proved more resilient with a 2% reduction only. The benefits of these higher shares of clean energy in terms of reduced emissions of greenhouse gases and other air pollutants have been on full display worldwide over the past months.

Challenges for the future

Despite the demonstrated performance of a cleaner energy system through the crisis - including the capacity of existing nuclear power plants to deliver a competitive, reliable, and low carbon electricity service when needed - both short- and long-term challenges remain.

In the shorter term, the collapse in electricity demand has accelerated recent falls in electricity prices, particularly in Europe (Fig. 4), from already economically unsustainable levels. According to Standard and Poor's Midyear Update, the large price drops in Europe result from not only COVID-19 lockdown measures but also collapsing demand due to an unusually warm winter, increased supply from renewables in a context of lower gas prices and CO2 allowances . Such low prices further exacerbate the challenging environment faced by many electricity generators, including nuclear plants. These may impede the required investments in the clean energy transition, with longer term consequences on the achievement of climate goals.

For nuclear power, maintaining and extending the operation of existing plants is essential to support and accelerate the transition to low carbon energy systems. With a supportive investment environment, a 10-20 year lifetime extension can be realized at an average cost of US $30-40/MW*h, making it among the most cost-effective low-carbon options, while also maintaining dispatchable capacity and lowering the overall cost of the clean energy transition. The IEA Sustainable Recovery report indicates that without such extensions 40% of the nuclear fleet in developed economies may be retired within a decade, adding around US$ 80 billion per year to electricity bills. The IEA note the potential for nuclear plant maintenance and extension programmes to support recovery measures by generating significant economic activity and employment.

The need for flexibility

New nuclear power projects can provide similar economic and environmental benefits and applications beyond electricity, but will be all the more challenging to finance without strong policy support and more substantive power market reforms, including improved frameworks for remunerating reliability, flexibility and other services. The need for flexibility in electricity generation and system operation - a trend accelerated by the crisis - will increasingly characterize future energy systems over the medium to longer term.

Looking further ahead, while generators and system operators successfully responded to the crisis, the observed decline in fossil fuel generation draws attention to additional grid stability challenges likely to emerge further into the energy transition. Heavy rotating steam and gas turbines provide mechanical inertia to an electricity system, thereby maintaining its balance. Replacing these capacities with variable renewables may result in greater instability, poorer power quality and increased incidence of blackouts. Large nuclear power plants along with other technologies can fill this role, alleviating the risk of supply disruptions in fully decarbonized electricity systems.

The challenges created by COVID-19 have also brought into focus the need to ensure resilience is built-in to future energy systems to cope with a broader range of external shocks, including more variable and extreme weather patterns expected from climate change.

The performance of nuclear power during the crisis provides a timely reminder of its ongoing contribution and future potential in creating a more sustainable, reliable, low carbon energy system.

Data sources for electricity demand, generation and prices: European Network of Transmission System Operators for Electricity (Europe), Ukrenergo National Power Company (Ukraine), Power System Operation Corporation (India), Korea Power Exchange (South Korea), Operador Nacional do Sistema Eletrico (Brazil), Independent Electricity System Operator (Ontario, Canada), EIA (USA). Data cover 1 January to May/June.

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Hydro-Que9bec 2020 Profit Outlook faces COVID-19 headwinds as revenue drops, U.S. Northeast export demand weakens, and clean-energy infrastructure plans shift toward domestic investments, energy efficiency, EV charging stations, and grid upgrades to stabilize net income.

Key Points

A forecast of COVID-19 revenue declines, weaker U.S. exports, and a shift to energy efficiency and grid upgrades.

✅ Q1 profit fell 14%; net income $1.53B vs $1.77B

✅ Exports to U.S. Northeast weaker; revenue off ~$130M Mar-Jun

✅ Strategy: energy efficiency, EV charging, grid, dam upgrades

Hydro-Québec expects the coronavirus pandemic to chop “hundreds of millions of dollars” off 2020 profits, its new chief executive officer said.

COVID-19 has depressed revenue by about $130 million between March and June, Sophie Brochu said Monday, as residential electricity use rose even while overall consumption dropped. Shrinking electricity exports to the U.S. northeast are poised to compound the shortfall, she said.

“What we’re living through is not small. The impacts are real,” Brochu said on a conference call with reporters, noting that utilities such as Hydro One supported Ontario's COVID-19 response at the height of the pandemic. “I’m not talking about a billion. I’m talking about hundreds of millions. We have no idea how quickly the economy will restart. As we approach the fall we will have a better view.”

Hydro-Québec last month reported a 14-per-cent drop in first-quarter profit and warned full-year results would fall short of targets as the COVID-19 crisis weighs on power demand. Net income in the quarter was $1.53 billion compared with $1.77 billion a year ago, the company said.

Canada’s biggest electricity producer had earlier been targeting 2020 profit of between $2.8 billion and $3 billion, according to its current strategic plan and corporate structure currently in place.

The first quarter was the utility’s last under former CEO Eric Martel, who left to take over at jetmaker Bombardier Inc. Brochu, who previously ran Énergir, replaced him April 6.

To boost exports over time, Brochu said Hydro-Québec will look to strengthen ties with neighbours such as Ontario, where the Hydro One CEO is working to repair relations with government and investors, and the U.S. The CEO said she’s heartened by New York Governor Andrew Cuomo’s call last month for new power lines from Canada and upstate to promote clean energy.

“This is a clear, encouraging signal that must express itself through very concrete negotiations,” she said. “The United States is our backyard. This is true for Ontario, where key system staff lockdowns were even contemplated, and the Atlantic provinces as well. This is our ecosystem, and we intend to build on our footprint, on the relationships that we have.”

Though stricter environmental hurdles make it more complicated to get power lines built today than a decade ago, the CEO insists it’s still possible to sell electricity to neighbouring U.S. states.

“Is it more difficult today to build energy projects? The answer is yes,” she said. “Does this clog up the U.S. northeast market? Not at all. I believe this federation of ecosystems is very promising.”

In the meantime, Hydro-Québec is planning to speed up investments at home — for example, by building new charging stations that will be needed to serve a growing fleet of electric cars. The utility will also upgrade some of its Montreal-area facilities, as well as its massive dams on the Manicouagan River, Brochu said. The investments will result in additional capacity.

“Today we need to put water in the pump of Quebec, so we will concentrate our human and financial efforts here,” she said. “We are needed in Quebec.” 

Hydro-Québec is stepping up efforts to promote energy efficiency among its customer base, amid retroactive billing concerns, which Brochu said could postpone the need to build large dams.

“We have to move towards ‘no-regret moves.’ What’s a no-regret move? It’s energy efficiency,” Brochu said earlier Monday during a presentation to the Chamber of Commerce of Metropolitan Montreal, noting that Ontario debated peak rate relief for self-isolating customers. “This is healthy, it’s fundamental and it will contribute to Quebec’s economic rebound by lowering energy costs.”

Brochu also pledged to build a more diverse workforce after the company said last week that 8.2 per cent of staff belong to “visible and ethnic” minorities.

“This can be improved on,” she said. “What I’m expressing today is my determination, and that of the management team, to move the needle.”

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Nova Scotia Biomass Energy faces scrutiny as hydropower from Muskrat Falls via the Maritime Link increases, raising concerns over carbon emissions, biodiversity, ratepayer costs, and efficiency versus district heating in the province's renewable mix.

Key Points

Electricity from wood chips and waste wood in Nova Scotia, increasingly questioned as hydropower from the Maritime Link grows.

✅ Hydropower deliveries reduce need for biomass on the grid

✅ Biomass is inefficient, costly, and impacts biodiversity

✅ District heating offers better use of forestry residuals

The Ecology Action Centre's senior wilderness coordinator is calling on the Nova Scotia government to reduce the use of biomass to generate electricity now that more hydroelectric power is flowing into the province.

In 2020, the government of the day signed a directive for Nova Scotia Power to increase its use of biomass to generate electricity, including burning more wood chips, waste wood and other residuals from the forest industry. At the time, power from Muskrat Falls hydroelectric project in Labrador was not flowing into the province at high enough levels to reach provincial targets for electricity generated by renewable resources.

In recent months, however, the Maritime Link from Muskrat Falls has delivered Nova Scotia's full share of electricity, and, in some cases, even more, as the province also pursues Bay of Fundy tides projects to diversify supply.

Ray Plourde with the Ecology Action Centre said that should be enough to end the 2020 directive.

Ray Plourde is senior wilderness coordinator for the Ecology Action Centre. (CBC)
Biomass is "bad on a whole lot of levels," said Plourde, including its affects on biodiversity and the release of carbon into the atmosphere, he said. The province's reliance on waste wood as a source of fuel for electricity should be curbed, said Plourde.

"It's highly inefficient," he said. "It's the most expensive electricity on the power grid for ratepayers."

A spokesperson for the provincial Natural Resources and Renewables Department said that although the Maritime Link has "at times" delivered adequate electricity to Nova Scotia, "it hasn't done so consistently," a context that has led some to propose an independent planning body for long-term decisions.

"These delays and high fossil fuel prices mean that biomass remains a small but important component of our renewable energy mix," Patricia Jreiga said in an email, even as the province plans to increase wind and solar projects in the years ahead.

But to Plourde, that explanation doesn't wash.

The Nova Scotia Utility and Review Board recently ruled that Nova Scotia Power could begin recouping costs of the Maritime Link project from ratepayers. As for the rising cost of fossil fuels, Ploude noted that the inefficiency of biomass means there's no deal to be had using it as a fuel source.

"Honestly, that sounds like a lot of obfuscation," he said of the government's position.

No update on district heating plans
At the time of the directive, government officials said the increased use of forestry byproducts at biomass plants in Point Tupper and Brooklyn, N.S., including the nearby Port Hawkesbury Paper mill, would provide a market for businesses struggling to replace the loss of Northern Pulp as a customer. Brooklyn Power has been offline since a windstorm damaged that plant in February, however. Repairs are expected to be complete by the end of the year or early 2023.

Ploude said a better use for waste wood products would be small-scale district heating projects, while others advocate using more electricity for heat in cold regions.

Although the former Liberal government announced six public buildings to serve as pilot sites for district heating in 2020, and a list of 100 other possible buildings that could be converted to wood heat, there have been no updates.

"Currently, we're working with several other departments to complete technical assessments for additional sites and looking at opportunities for district heating, but no decisions have been made yet," provincial spokesperson Steven Stewart said in an email.

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