Solar execs see small signs of recovery

COVID-19 Impact on Global Oil Demand 2020 signals an IEA forecast of declining consumption as travel restrictions curb transport fuels, disrupt energy markets, and shift OPEC and non-OPEC supply dynamics amid economic slowdown.

Key Points

IEA sees first demand drop since 2009 as COVID-19 curbs travel, weakening transport fuels and unsettling energy markets.

✅ IEA base case: 2020 demand at 99.9 mb/d, down 90 kb/d from 2019.

✅ Travel restrictions hit transport fuels; China drives the decline.

✅ Scenarios: low -730 kb/d; high +480 kb/d in 2020.

Global oil demand is expected to decline in 2020 as the impact of the new coronavirus (COVID-19) spreads around the world, constricting travel and broader economic activity, according to the International Energy Agency’s latest oil market forecast.

The situation remains fluid, creating an extraordinary degree of uncertainty over what the full global impact of the virus will be. In the IEA’s central base case, even as global CO2 emissions flatlined in 2019 according to the IEA, demand this year drops for the first time since 2009 because of the deep contraction in oil consumption in China, and major disruptions to global travel and trade.

“The coronavirus crisis is affecting a wide range of energy markets – including coal-fired electricity generation, gas and renewables – but its impact on oil markets is particularly severe because it is stopping people and goods from moving around, dealing a heavy blow to demand for transport fuels,” said Dr Fatih Birol, the IEA’s Executive Director. “This is especially true in China, the largest energy consumer in the world, which accounted for more than 80% of global oil demand growth last year. While the repercussions of the virus are spreading to other parts of the world, what happens in China will have major implications for global energy and oil markets.”

The IEA now sees global oil demand at 99.9 million barrels a day in 2020, down around 90,000 barrels a day from 2019. This is a sharp downgrade from the IEA’s forecast in February, which predicted global oil demand would grow by 825,000 barrels a day in 2020.

The short-term outlook for the oil market will ultimately depend on how quickly governments move to contain the coronavirus outbreak, how successful their efforts are, and what lingering impact the global health crisis has on economic activity.

To account for the extreme uncertainty facing energy markets, the IEA has developed two other scenarios for how global oil demand could evolve this year. In a more pessimistic low case, global measures fail to contain the virus, and global demand falls by 730,000 barrels a day in 2020. In a more optimistic high case, the virus is contained quickly around the world, and global demand grows by 480,000 barrels a day.

“We are following the situation extremely closely and will provide regular updates to our forecasts as the picture becomes clearer,” Dr Birol said. “The impact of the coronavirus on oil markets may be temporary. But the longer-term challenges facing the world’s suppliers are not going to go away, especially those heavily dependent on oil and gas revenues. As the IEA has repeatedly said, these producer countries need more dynamic and diversified economies in order to navigate the multiple uncertainties that we see today.”

The IEA also published its medium-term outlook examining the key issues in global demand, supply, refining and trade to 2025, as well as the trajectory of the global energy transition now shaping markets. Following a contraction in 2020 and an expected sharp rebound in 2021, yearly growth in global oil demand is set to slow as consumption of transport fuels grows more slowly and as national net-zero pathways, with Canada needing more electricity to reach net-zero influencing power demand, according to the report. Between 2019 and 2025, global oil demand is expected to grow at an average annual rate of just below 1 million barrels a day. Over the period as whole, demand rises by a total of 5.7 million barrels a day, with China and India accounting for about half of the growth.

At the same time, the world’s oil production capacity is expected to rise by 5.9 million barrels a day, with more than three-quarters of it coming from non-OPEC producers, the report forecasts. But production growth in the United States and other non-OPEC countries is set to lose momentum after 2022, amid shifts in Wall Street's energy strategy linked to policy signals, allowing OPEC producers from the Middle East to turn the taps back up to help keep the global oil market in balance.

The medium-term market report, Oil 2020, also considers the impact of clean energy transitions on oil market trends. Demand growth for gasoline and diesel between 2019 and 2025 is forecast to weaken as countries around the world implement policies to improve efficiency and cut carbon dioxide emissions – and as solar power becomes the cheapest electricity in many markets and electric vehicles increase in popularity. The impact of energy transitions on oil supply remains unclear, with many companies prioritising short-cycle projects for the coming years.

“The coronavirus crisis is adding to the uncertainties the global oil industry faces as it contemplates new investments and business strategies,” Dr Birol said. “The pressures on companies are changing, with European oil majors turning electric to diversify. They need to show that they can deliver not just the energy that economies rely on, but also the emissions reductions that the world needs to help tackle our climate challenge.”

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Manitoba Hydro Rate Increase sets electricity rates up 2.5% annually for three years via Bill 35, bypassing PUB hearings, citing Crown utility debt and pandemic impacts, with legislature debate and a multi-year regulatory review ahead.

Key Points

A government plan to lift electricity rates 2.5% annually over three years via Bill 35, bypassing PUB hearings.

✅ 2.5% annual hikes for three years set in legislation

✅ Bypasses PUB rate hearings during pandemic recovery

✅ Targets Crown utility debt; multi-year review planned

The Manitoba government is planning to raise electricity rates, with Manitoba Hydro scaling back next year, by 2.5 per cent a year over the next three years.

Finance Minister Scott Fielding says the increases, to be presented in a bill before the legislature, are the lowest in a decade and will help keep rates among the lowest in Canada, even as SaskPower's 8% hike draws scrutiny in a neighbouring province.

Crown-owned Manitoba Hydro had asked for a 3.5 per cent increase this year, similar to BC Hydro's 3% rise, to help pay off billions of dollars in debt.

“The way we figured this out, we looked at the rate increases that were approved by PUB (Public Utilities Board) over the last ten years, (and) we went to 75 per cent of that,” Fielding said during a Thursday morning press conference.

“It’s a pandemic, we know that there’s a lot of people that are unemployed, that are struggling, we know that businesses need to recharge after the business (sic), so this will provide them an appropriate break.”

Electricity rates are normally set by the Public Utilities Board, a regulatory body that holds rate hearings and examines the Crown corporation’s finances.

The Progressive Conservative government has temporarily suspended the regulatory process and has set rates itself, while Ontario rate legislation to lower rates moved forward in its jurisdiction.

Manitoba Liberal leader Dougald Lamont was quick to condemn the move, noting parallels to Ontario price concerns before saying in a news release the PCs “are abusing their power and putting Hydro’s financial future at risk by fixing prices in the hope of buying some political popularity.”

“Hydro’s rates should be set by the PUB after public hearings, not figured out on the back of a napkin in the Premier’s office,” Lamont wrote.

Fielding noted the increase would appear as an amendment to Bill 35, which will appear in the legislature this fall, as BC Hydro plans multi-year increases proceed elsewhere.

“All members of the legislative assembly will vote and debate this rate increase on Bill 35,” Fielding said.

“This will give the PUB time to implement reforms, and allow the utilities to prepare a more rigorous, multi-year review application process.”

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BC Hydro Holiday Energy Saving Tips highlight electricity usage trends and power conservation during Christmas cooking. Use efficient appliances, lower the thermostat, and track consumption with MyHydro to reduce bills while hosting guests.

Key Points

Guidelines from BC Hydro to cut holiday electricity usage via efficient cooking, smart thermostats, and MyHydro tracking.

✅ Use microwave, toaster oven, or slow cooker to save power.

✅ Batch-bake cookies and pies to minimize oven cycles.

✅ Set thermostat to 18 C and monitor use with MyHydro.

BC Hydro is reminding British Columbians to conserve power over the holidays after a report commissioned by the utility found the arrival of guests for Christmas dinner results in a 15% increase in electricity usage, and it expects holiday usage to rise as gatherings ramp up.

Cooking appears to be the number one culprit for the uptick in peoples’ hydro bills. According to BC Hydro press release, British Columbians use about 8,000 megawatt hours more of electricity by mid-day Christmas — that's about 1.5 million turkeys roasted in electric ovens — while Ontario electricity demand shifted as people stayed home during the pandemic.
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About 95% of British Columbians said they would make meals at home from scratch over the holiday season, mirroring the uptick in residential electricity use observed during the pandemic. The survey found that inviting friends or family over trumped any plans people had to buy pre-made meals or order take-out. Six in 10 respondents said they would also rather bake holiday treats than pick them up pre-made from the store. 

The survey also showed people in B.C. are taking steps to reduce their electricity usage, echoing earlier findings that many British Columbians changed daily electricity habits during the pandemic. When participants were asked whether they were conscious of how much electricity they used when visiting friends or family, 80% said they would be taking steps to limit their usage.

And while cooking meals from scratch over the holidays may contribute to a spike in a person's electricity bill, some studies have found that, when comparing their overall environmental impact against that of ready-made meals, a roasted dinner has a lower negative impact.

Still, there are many ways to improve your energy efficiency and save some money over the holiday season, and conserving can also help the grid during events like the recent atypical storm response noted by BC Hydro. BC Hydro recommends:

• using smaller appliances whenever possible, such as a microwave, crockpot or toaster oven as they use less than half the power of a regular electric oven;

• baking cookies or pies in batches to save energy;

• turning down the household thermostat to 18 C when possible to reduce costs during peak hydro rates where applicable;

• and tracking how much electricity you use through the MyHydro tool alongside potential time-of-use rates for smarter scheduling

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Self-healing grid technology automatically reroutes power to reduce outages, speed restoration, and boost reliability during storms like Hurricane Ian in Florida, leveraging smart grid sensors, automation, and grid hardening to support Duke Energy customers.

Key Points

Automated smart grid systems that detect faults and reroute power to minimize outages and accelerate restoration.

✅ Cuts outage duration via automated fault isolation

✅ Reroutes electricity with sensors and distribution automation

✅ Supports storm resilience and faster field crew restoration

As Hurricane Ian made its way across Florida, where restoring power in Florida can take weeks in hard-hit areas, Duke Energy's grid improvements were already on the job helping to combat power outages from the storm.

Smart, self-healing technology, similar to smart grid improvements elsewhere, helped to automatically restore more than 160,000 customer outages and saved nearly 3.3 million hours (nearly 200 million minutes) of total lost outage time.

"Hurricane Ian is a strong reminder of the importance of grid hardening and storm preparedness to help keep the lights on for our customers," said Melissa Seixas, Duke Energy Florida state president. "Self-healing technology is just one of many grid improvements that Duke Energy is making to avoid outages, restore service faster and increase reliability for our customers."

Much like the GPS in your car can identify an accident ahead and reroute you around the incident to keep you on your way, self-healing technology is like a GPS for the grid. The technology can quickly identify power outages and alternate energy pathways to restore service faster for customers when an outage occurs.

Additionally, self-healing technology provides a smart tool to assist crews in the field with power restoration after a major storm like Ian, helping reduce outage impacts and freeing up resources to help restore power in other locations.

Three days after Hurricane Ian exited the state, Duke Energy Florida wrapped up restoration of approximately 1 million customers. This progress enabled the company to deploy more than 550 Duke Energy workers from throughout Florida, as well as contractors from across the country, to help restore power for Lee County Electric Cooperative customers.

Crews worked in Cape Coral and Pine Island, one of the hardest-hit areas in the storm's path, as Canadian power crews have in past storms, and completed power restoration for the majority of customers on Pine Island within approximately one week after arriving to the island.

Prior to Ian in 2022, smart, self-healing technology had helped avoid nearly 250,000 extended customer outages in Florida, similar to Hydro One storm recovery efforts, saving around 285,000 hours (17.1 million minutes) of total lost outage time.

Duke Energy currently serves around 59% of customers in Florida with self-healing capabilities on its main power distribution lines, with a goal of serving around 80% over the next few years.

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Ontario Nuclear Refurbishment Economic Impact powers growth as Bruce Power's MCR and OPG's Darlington unit 2 refurbishment drive jobs, supply-chain spending, medical isotopes, clean baseload power, and lower GHG emissions across Ontario and Canada.

Key Points

It is the measured gains from Bruce Power's MCR and OPG's Darlington refurbishment in jobs, taxes, and clean energy.

✅ CAD7.6B-10.6B impact in Ontario; CAD8.1B-11.6B nationwide.

✅ Supports 60% nuclear supply, jobs, and medical isotopes.

✅ MCR and Darlington cut GHGs, drive innovation and supply chains.

The 13-year Major Component Replacement (MCR) project being undertaken as part of Bruce Power's life-extension programme, which officially began with a reactor taken offline earlier this year, will inject billions of dollars into Ontario's economy, a new report has found. Meanwhile, the major project to refurbish Darlington unit 2 remains on track for completion in 2020, Ontario Power Generation (OPG) has announced.

The Ontario Chamber of Commerce (OCC) said its report, Major Component Replacement Project Economic Impact Analysis, outlines an impartial assessment of the MCR programme and related manufacturing contracts across the supply chain. The report was commissioned by Bruce Power.

"Our analysis shows that Bruce Power's MCR project is a fundamental contributor to the Ontario economy. More broadly, the life-extension of the Bruce Power facility will provide quality jobs for Ontarians, produce a stable supply of medical isotopes for the world's healthcare system, and deliver economic benefit through direct and indirect spending," OCC President and CEO Rocco Rossi said."As Ontario's energy demand grows, nuclear truly is the best option to meet those demands with reduced GHG [greenhouse gas] emissions. The Bruce Power MCR Project will not only drive economic growth in the region, it will position Ontario as a global leader in nuclear innovation and expertise."

According to the OCC's economic analysis, the MCR's economic impact on Ontario is estimated to be between CAD7.6 billion (USD5.6 billion) and CAD10.6 billion. Nationally, its economic impact is estimated to be between CAD8.1 billion and CAD11.6 billion. It estimates that the federal government will receive CAD144 million in excise tax and CAD1.2 billion in income tax, while the provincial government will receive CAD300 million and CAD437 million. Ontario’s municipal governments are estimated to receive a collective CAD192 million in tax.

The nuclear industry currently provides 60% of Ontario’s daily energy supply needs, with Pickering life extension plans bolstering system reliability, and is made up of over 200 companies and more than 60,000 jobs across a diversity of sectors such as operations, manufacturing, skilled trades, healthcare, and research and innovation, the report notes.

Greg Rickford, Ontario's minister of Energy, Northern Development and Mines, and minister of Indigenous Affairs, said continued use of the Bruce generating station which recently set an operating record would create jobs and advance Ontario’s nuclear industrial sector. "It is great to see projects like the MCR that help make Ontario the best place to invest, do business and find a job," he said.

The MCR is part of Bruce Power's overall life-extension programme, which started in January 2016. Bruce 6 will be the first of the six Candu units to undergo an MCR which will take 46 months to complete and give the unit a further 30-35 years of operational life. The total cost of refurbishing Bruce units 3-8 is estimated at about CAD8 billion, in addition to CAD5 billion on other activities under the life-extension programme, which is scheduled for completion by 2053.

Darlington milestones

OPG's long-term refurbishment programme at Darlington, alongside SMR plans for the site announced by the province, began with unit 2 in 2016 after years of detailed planning and preparation. Reassembly of the reactor, which was disassembled last year, is scheduled for completion this spring, and the unit 2 refurbishment project remains on track for completion in early 2020. At the same time, final preparations are under way for the start of the refurbishment of unit 3.

"We've entered a critical phase on the project," Senior Vice President of Nuclear Refurbishment Mike Allen said. "OPG and our project partners continue to work as an integrated team to meet our commitments on Unit 2 and our other three reactors at Darlington Nuclear Generating Station."

A 350-tonne generator stator manufactured by GE in Poland is currently in transit to Canada, where it will be installed in Darlington 3's turbine hall as the province also breaks ground on its first SMR this year.

The 10-year Darlington refurbishment is due to be completed in 2026, while the province plans to refurbish Pickering B to extend output beyond that date.

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Hybrid renewable energy projects integrate wind, solar, and battery storage to enhance grid reliability, reduce curtailment, and provide dispatchable power in markets like Alberta, leveraging photovoltaic tracking, overbuilt transformers, and improved storage economics.

Key Points

Hybrid renewable energy projects combine wind, solar, and storage to deliver reliable, dispatchable clean power.

✅ Combine wind, solar, and batteries for steady, dispatchable output

✅ Lower curtailment by using shared transformers and smart inverters

✅ Boost farm income via leases; diversify risk from oil and gas

Third-generation farmer James Praskach has been burned by the oil and gas sector and watched wicked weather pound his crops flat, but he is hoping a new kind of energy -- the renewable kind -- will pay dividends.

The 39-year-old is part of a landowner consortium that is hosting the sprawling 300-megawatt Blackspring Ridge wind power project in southeastern Alberta.

He receives regular lease payments from the $600-million project that came online in 2014, even though none of the 166 towering wind turbines that surround his land are actually on it.

His lease payments stand to rise, however, when and if the proposed 77-MW Vulcan Solar project, which won regulatory approval in 2016, is green-lighted by developer EDF Renewables Inc.

The panels would cover about 400 hectares of his family's land with nearly 300,000 photovoltaic solar panels in Alberta, installed on racks designed to follow the sun. It would stand in the way of traditional grain farming of the land, but that wouldn't have been a problem this year, Praskach says.

"This year we actually had a massive storm roll through. And we had 100 per cent hail damage on all of (the Vulcan Solar lands). We had canola, peas and barley on it this year," he said, adding the crop was covered by insurance.

Meanwhile, poor natural gas prices and a series of oilpatch financial failures mean rents aren't being paid for about half of the handful of gas wells on his land, showing how a province that is a powerhouse for both fossil and green energy can face volatility -- he's appealed to the Alberta surface Rights Board for compensation.

"(Solar power) would definitely add a level of security for our farming operations," said Praskach.

Hybrid power projects that combine energy sources are a growing trend as selling renewable energy gains traction across markets. Solar only works during the day and wind only when it is windy so combining the two -- potentially with battery storage or natural gas or biomass generation -- makes the power profile more reliable and predictable.

Globally, an oft-cited example is on El Hierro, the smallest of the Canary Islands, where wind power is used to pump water uphill to a reservoir in a volcanic crater so that it can be released to provide hydroelectric power when needed. At times, the project has provided 100 per cent of the tiny island's energy needs.

Improvements in technology such as improving solar and wind power and lower costs for storage mean it is being considered as a hybrid add-on for nearly all of its renewable power projects, said Dan Cunningham, manager of business development at Greengate Power Corp. of Calgary.

Grant Arnold, CEO of developer BluEarth Renewables, agreed.

"The barrier to date, I would say, has been cost of storage but that is changing rapidly," he said. "We feel that wind and storage or solar and storage will be a fundamental way we do business within five years. It's changing very, very rapidly and it's the product everybody wants."

Vulcan Solar was proposed after Blackspring Ridge came online, said David Warner, associate director of business development for EDF Renewables, which now co-owns the wind farm with Enbridge Inc.

"Blackspring actually had incremental capacity in the main power transformers," he said. "Essentially, it was capable of delivering more energy than Blackspring was producing. It was overbuilt."

Vulcan Solar has been sized to utilize the shortfall without producing so much energy that either will ever have to be constrained, he said. Much of the required environmental work has already been done for the wind farm.

Storage is being examined as a potential addition to the project but implementing it depends on the regulatory system. At present, Alberta's regulators are still working on how to permit and control what they call "dispatchable renewables and storage" systems.

EDF announced last spring it would proceed with the Arrow Canyon Solar Project in Nevada which is to combine 200 MW of solar with 75 MW of battery storage by 2022 -- the batteries are to soak up the sun's power in the morning and dispatch the electricity in the afternoon when Las Vegas casinos' air conditioning is most needed.

What is clear is that renewable energy will continue to grow, with Alberta renewable jobs expected to follow -- in a recent report, the International Energy Agency said global electricity capacity from renewables is set to rise by 50 per cent over the next five years, an increase equivalent to adding the current total power capacity of the United States.

The share of renewables is expected to rise from 26 per cent now to 30 per cent in 2024 but will remain well short of what is needed to meet long-term climate, air quality and energy access goals, it added.

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