IAEA fails to elect new head

Alberta Last-Resort Power Rate Reform outlines consumer protection against market volatility, price spikes, and wholesale rate swings, promoting fixed-rate plans, price caps, transparency, and stable pricing mechanisms within Alberta's deregulated power market.

Key Points

Alberta Last-Resort Power Rate Reform seeks stable, transparent pricing and stronger consumer protections.

✅ Caps or hedges shield bills from wholesale price spikes

✅ Expand fixed-rate options and enrollment nudges

✅ Publish clear, real-time pricing and market risk alerts

Alberta’s electricity market is facing growing instability, with rising prices leaving many consumers struggling. The province's rate of last resort, a government-set price for people who haven’t chosen a fixed electricity plan, has become a significant concern. Due to volatile market conditions, this rate has surged, causing financial strain for households. Experts, like energy policy analyst Blake Shaffer, argue that the current market structure needs reform. They suggest creating more stability in pricing, ensuring better protection for consumers against unexpected price spikes, and addressing the flaws that lead to market volatility.

As electricity prices climb, many consumers are feeling the pressure. In Alberta, where energy deregulation is the norm in the electricity market, people without fixed-rate plans are automatically switched to the last-resort rate when their contracts expire. This price is based on fluctuating wholesale market rates, which can spike unexpectedly, leaving consumers vulnerable to sharp price increases. For those on tight budgets, such volatility makes it difficult to predict costs, leading to higher financial stress.

Blake Shaffer, a prominent energy policy expert, has been vocal about the need to address these issues. He has highlighted that while some consumers benefit from fixed-rate plans, with experts urging Albertans to lock in rates when possible, those who cannot afford them or who are unaware of their options often find themselves stuck with the unpredictable last-resort rate. This rate can be substantially higher than what a fixed-plan customer would pay, often due to rapid shifts in energy demand and supply imbalances.

Shaffer suggests that the province’s electricity market needs a restructuring to make it more consumer-friendly and less vulnerable to extreme price hikes. He argues that introducing more transparency in pricing and offering more stable options for consumers through new electricity rules could help. In addition, there could be better incentives for consumers to stay informed about their electricity plans, which would help reduce the number of people unintentionally placed on the last-resort rate.

One potential solution proposed by Shaffer and others is the creation of a more predictable and stable pricing mechanism, though a Calgary electricity retailer has urged the government to scrap an overhaul, where consumers could have access to reasonable rates that aren’t so closely tied to the volatility of the wholesale market. This could involve capping prices or offering government-backed insurance against large price fluctuations, making electricity more affordable for those who are most at risk.

The increasing reliance on market-driven prices has also raised concerns about Alberta’s energy policy changes and overall direction. As a province with a large reliance on oil and gas, Alberta’s energy sector is tightly connected to global energy trends. While this has its benefits, it also means that Alberta’s electricity prices are heavily influenced by factors outside the control of local consumers, such as geopolitical issues or extreme weather events. This makes it hard for residents to predict and plan their energy usage and costs.

For many Albertans, the current state of the electricity market feels precarious. As more people face unexpected price hikes, calls for a market overhaul continue to grow louder across Alberta. Shaffer and others believe that a new framework is necessary—one that balances the interests of consumers, the government, and energy companies, while ensuring that basic energy needs are met without overwhelming households with excessive costs.

In conclusion, Alberta’s last-resort electricity rate system is an increasing burden for many. While some may benefit from fixed-rate plans, others are left exposed to market volatility. Blake Shaffer advocates for reform to create a more stable, transparent, and affordable electricity market, one that could better protect consumers from the high risks associated with deregulated pricing. Addressing these challenges will be crucial in ensuring that energy remains accessible and affordable for all Alberta residents.

Related News

• Electricity Forum News

• Energy Policy News

Global Electricity Emissions Decline highlights a 2% drop as coal power falls, while wind and solar surge. EU and US decarbonize faster; China expands coal and gas, challenging Paris Agreement climate targets.

Key Points

A 2% annual fall in power-sector CO2, led by less coal and rising wind and solar in the EU and US.

✅ Coal generation fell 3% globally despite China growth

✅ EU and US cut coal; wind and solar up 15% worldwide

✅ Gas gains in US; rapid renewables rollout needed for targets

Carbon emissions from the global electricity system fell by 2% last year, the biggest drop in almost 30 years, as countries began to turn their backs on coal-fired power plants.

A new report on the world’s electricity generation revealed the steepest cut in carbon emissions since 1990, with IEA data indicating global totals flatlined in 2019 as the US and the EU turned to cleaner energy sources.

Overall, power from coal plants fell by 3% last year, even as China’s reliance on coal plants climbed for another year to make up half the world’s coal generation for the first time.

Coal generation in the US and Europe has halved since 2007, and last year collapsed by almost a quarter in the EU and by 16% in the US.

The report from climate thinktank Ember, formerly Sandbag, warned that the dent in the world’s coal-fired electricity generation relied on many one-off factors, including milder winters across many countries.

“Progress is being made on reducing coal generation, but nothing like with the urgency needed to limit climate change,” the report said.

Dave Jones, the lead author of the report, said governments must dramatically accelerate the global energy transition so that global coal generation collapses throughout the 2020s.

“To switch from coal into gas is just swapping one fossil fuel for another. The cheapest and quickest way to end coal generation is through a rapid rollout of carbon-free electricity such as wind and solar,” he said.

“But without concerted policymaker efforts to boost wind and solar, we will fail to meet climate targets. China’s growth in coal, and to some extent gas, is alarming but the answers are all there.”

The EU has made the fastest progress towards replacing coal with wind and solar power, while the US has increased its reliance on gas as Wall Street’s energy strategy shifted following its shale boom in recent years.

The report revealed that renewable wind and solar power rose by 15% in 2019 to make up 8% of the world’s electricity.

In the EU, wind and solar power made up almost a fifth of the electricity generated last year, and Europe’s oil majors are turning electric as the bloc stayed ahead of the US which relied on these renewable sources for 11% of its electricity. In China and India, renewable energy made up 8% and 9% of the electricity system, respectively.

To meet the Paris climate goals, the world needs to record a compound growth rate of 15% for wind and solar generation every year – which will require “a colossal effort”, the report warned.

The electricity generation report was published as a separate piece of research claimed that 38 out of 75 of the world’s largest asset managers are stalling on taking action on environmental, social and governance (ESG) issues, and amid investor pressure on utilities to release climate reports.

The latest ranking by Asset Owners Disclosure Project, a scheme managed by the investment campaign group ShareAction, found that the 38 asset managers have weak or nonexistent policy commitments and fail to account for their real-world impacts across their mainstream assets.

The survey also claimed that the investment managers often lack appropriate engagement and escalation processes on climate change, human rights and biodiversity.

Scores were based on a survey of activities in responsible investment governance, climate change, human rights, and biodiversity and ranged between AAA to E. Not a single asset manager was granted an AAA or AA rating, the top two scores available.

Felix Nagrawala, ShareAction analyst, said: “While many in the industry are eager to promote their ESG credentials, our analysis clearly indicates that few of the world’s largest asset managers can lay claim to having a truly sustainable approach across all their investments.”

ShareAction said the world’s six largest asset managers – including BlackRock (rated D), State Street (D) and Vanguard (E) – were among the worst performers.

Vanguard said it was committed to companies making “appropriate disclosures on governance, strategy and performance on relevant ESG risks”. BlackRock and State Street did not respond to a request for comment.

Related News

• Electricity Forum News

• Climate Change News

Developing Countries Clean Energy investment fell as renewable energy financing slowed in China; solar and wind growth lagged while coal power hit new highs, raising emissions risks for emerging markets and complicating climate change goals.

Key Points

Renewables investment and power trends in emerging nations: solar, wind, coal shifts, and steps toward decarbonization.

✅ Investment fell to $133b; China dropped to $86b

✅ Coal power rose to 6,900 TWh; 47% generation share

✅ New coal builds declined to 39 GW, decade low

New clean energy investment slid by more than a fifth in developing countries last year due to a slowdown in China, while the amount of coal-fired power generation jumped to a new high, reflecting global power demand trends, a recent annual survey showed.

Bloomberg New Energy Finance (BNEF) surveyed 104 emerging markets and found that developing nations were moving towards cleaner, low-emissions sources in many regions, but not fast enough to limit carbon dioxide emissions or the effects of climate change.

New investment in wind, solar and other clean energy projects dropped to $133 billion last year from $169 billion a year earlier, mainly due to a slump in Chinese investment, even as electricity investment globally surpasses oil and gas for the first time, the research showed.

China’s clean energy investment fell to $86 billion from $122 billion a year earlier, with dynamics in China's electricity sector also in focus. Investment by India and Brazil also declined, mainly due to lower costs for solar and wind.

However, the volume of coal-fired power generation produced and consumed in developing countries increased to a new high of 6,900 terrawatt hours (TWh) last year, even as renewables are poised to eclipse coal globally, from 6,400 TWh in 2017.

The increase of 500 TWh is equivalent to the power consumed in the U.S. state of Texas in one year, underscoring how surging electricity demand is putting power systems under strain. Coal accounted for 47% of all power generation across the 104 countries.

“The transition from coal toward cleaner sources in developing nations is underway,” said Ethan Zindler, head of Americas at BNEF. “But like trying to turn a massive oil tanker, it takes time.”

Despite the spike in coal-fired generation, the amount of new coal capacity which was added to the grid in developing countries declined, with Europe's renewables crowding out gas offering a contrasting pathway. New construction of coal plants fell to its lowest level in a decade last year of 39 gigawatts (GW).

The report comes a week ahead of United Nations climate talks in Madrid, Spain, where more than 190 countries will flesh out the details of an accord to limit global warming.

Related News

• Electricity Forum News

• Power Generation News

Futaba Partial Reopening marks limited access to the Fukushima exclusion zone, highlighting radiation decontamination progress, the train station restart, and regional recovery ahead of the Tokyo Olympics after the 2011 nuclear disaster and evacuation.

Key Points

A lift of entry bans in Futaba, signaling Fukushima recovery, decontamination progress, and a train station restart.

✅ Unrestricted access to 2.4 km² around Futaba Station

✅ Symbolic step ahead of Tokyo Olympics torch relay

✅ Decommissioning and decontamination to span decades

Japan's government on Wednesday opened part of the last town that had been off-limits due to radiation since the Fukushima nuclear disaster nine years ago, in a symbolic move to show the region's recovery ahead of the Tokyo Olympics, even as grid blackout risks have drawn scrutiny nationwide.

The entire population of 7,000 was forced to evacuate Futaba after three reactors melted down due to damage at the town's nuclear plant caused by a magnitude 9. 0 quake and tsunami March 11, 2011.

The partial lifting of the entry ban comes weeks before the Olympic torch starts from another town in Fukushima, as new energy projects like a large hydrogen system move forward in the prefecture. The torch could also arrive in Futaba, about 4 kilometres (2.4 miles) from the wrecked nuclear plant.

Unrestricted access, however, is only being allowed to a 2.4 square-kilometre (less than 1 square-mile) area near the main Futaba train station, which will reopen later this month to reconnect it with the rest of the region for the first time since the accident. The vast majority of Futaba is restricted to those who get permission for a day visit.

The three reactor meltdowns at the town's Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant spewed massive amounts of radiation that contaminated the surrounding area and at its peak, forced more than 160,000 people to flee, even as regulators later granted TEPCO restart approval for a separate Niigata plant elsewhere in Japan.

The gate at a checkpoint was opened at midnight Tuesday, and Futaba officials placed a signboard at their new town office, at a time when the shutdown of Germany's last reactors has reshaped energy debates abroad.

“I'm overwhelmed with emotion as we finally bring part of our town operations back to our home town," said Futaba Mayor Shiro Izawa. “I pledge to steadily push forward our recovery and reconstruction."

Town officials say they hope to see Futaba’s former residents return, but prospects are grim because of lingering concern about radiation, and as Germany's nuclear exit underscores shifting policies abroad. Many residents also found new jobs and ties to communities after evacuating, and only about 10% say they plan to return.

Futaba's registered residents already has decreased by 1,000 from its pre-disaster population of 7,000. Many evacuees ended up in Kazo City, north of Tokyo, after long bus trips, various stopovers and stays in shelters at an athletic arena and an abandoned high school. The town's government reopened in a makeshift office in another Fukushima town of Iwaki, while abroad projects like the Bruce reactor refurbishment illustrate long-term nuclear maintenance efforts.

Even after radiation levels declined to safe levels, the region's farming and fishing are hurt by lingering concerns among consumers and retailers. The nuclear plant is being decommission in a process that will take decades, with spent fuel removal delays extending timelines, and it is building temporary storage for massive amounts of debris and soil from ongoing decontamination efforts.

Related News

• Electricity Forum News

• Power Generation News

Waste-to-Graphene uses flash joule heating to convert carbon-rich trash into turbostratic graphene for composites, asphalt, concrete, and flexible electronics, delivering scalable, low-cost, high-quality material from food scraps, plastics, and tires with minimal processing.

Key Points

A flash heating method converting waste carbon into turbostratic graphene for scalable, low-cost industrial uses.

✅ Converts food scraps, plastics, and tires into graphene

✅ Produces turbostratic flakes that disperse well in composites

✅ Scalable, low-cost process via flash joule heating

Science doesn’t usually take after fairy tales. But Rumpelstiltskin, the magical imp who spun straw into gold, would be impressed with the latest chemical wizardry. Researchers at Rice University report today in Nature that they can zap virtually any source of solid carbon, from food scraps to old car tires, and turn it into graphene—sheets of carbon atoms prized for applications ranging from high-strength plastic to flexible electronics, and debates over 5G electricity use continue to evolve. Current techniques yield tiny quantities of picture-perfect graphene or up to tons of less prized graphene chunks; the new method already produces grams per day of near-pristine graphene in the lab, and researchers are now scaling it up to kilograms per day.

“This work is pioneering from a scientific and practical standpoint” as it promises to make graphene cheap enough to use to strengthen asphalt or paint, says Ray Baughman, a chemist at the University of Texas, Dallas. “I wish I had thought of it.” The researchers have already founded a new startup company, Universal Matter, to commercialize their waste-to-graphene process, while others are digitizing the electrical system to modernize infrastructure.

With atom-thin sheets of carbon atoms arranged like chicken wire, graphene is stronger than steel, conducts electricity and heat better than copper, and can serve as an impermeable barrier preventing metals from rusting, while advances such as superconducting cables aim to cut grid losses. But since its 2004 discovery, high-quality graphene—either single sheets or just a few stacked layers—has remained expensive to make and purify on an industrial scale. That’s not a problem for making diminutive devices such as high-speed transistors and efficient light-emitting diodes. But current techniques, which make graphene by depositing it from a vapor, are too costly for many high-volume applications. And higher throughput approaches, such as peeling graphene from chunks of the mineral graphite, produce flecks composed of up to 50 graphene layers that are not ideal for most applications.

Graphene comes in many forms. Single sheets, which are ideal for electronics and optics, can be grown using a method called chemical vapor deposition. But it produces only tiny amounts. For large volumes, companies commonly use a technique called liquid exfoliation. They start with chunks of graphite, which is just myriad stacked graphene layers. Then they use acids and solvents, as well as mechanical grinding, to shear off flakes. This approach typically produces tiny platelets each made up of 20 to 50 layers of graphene.

In 2014, James Tour, a chemist at Rice, and his colleagues found they could make a pure form of graphene—each piece just a few layers thick—by zapping a form of amorphous carbon called carbon black with a laser. Brief pulses heated the carbon to more than 3000 kelvins, snapping the bonds between carbon atoms; for comparison, researchers have also generated electricity from falling snow using triboelectric effects. As the cloud of carbon cooled, it coalesced into the most stable structure possible, graphene. But the approach still produced only tiny qualities and required a lot of energy.

Two years ago, Luong Xuan Duy, one of Tour’s graduate students, read that other researchers had created metal nanoparticles by zapping a material with electricity, creating the same brief blast of heat behind the success of the laser graphene approach. “I wondered if I could use that to heat a carbon source and produce graphene,” Duy says. So, he put a dash of carbon black in a clear glass vial and zapped it with 400 volts, similar in spirit to electrical weed zapping approaches in agriculture, for about 200 milliseconds. Initially he got junk. But after a bit of tweaking, he managed to create a bright yellowish white flash, indicating the temperature inside the vial was reaching about 3000 kelvins. Chemical tests revealed he had produced graphene.

It turned out to be a type of graphene that is ideal for bulk uses. As the carbon atoms condense to form graphene, they don’t have time to stack in a regular pattern, as they do in graphite. The result is a material known as turbostatic graphene, with graphene layers jumbled at all angles atop one another. “That’s a good thing,” Duy says. When added to water or other solvents, turbostatic graphene remains suspended instead of clumping up, allowing each fleck of the material to interact with whatever composite it’s added to.

“This will make it a very good material for applications,” says Monica Craciun, a materials physicist at the University of Exeter. In 2018, she and her colleagues reported that adding graphene to concrete more than doubled its compressive strength. Tour’s team saw much the same result. When they added just 0.05% by weight of their flash-produced graphene to concrete, the compressive strength rose 25%; graphene added to polydimethylsiloxane, a common plastic, boosted its strength by 250%.

As digital control spreads across energy networks, research to counter ransomware-driven blackouts is increasingly important for grid resilience.

Those results could reignite efforts to use graphene in a wide range of composites. Researchers in Italy reported recently that adding graphene to asphalt dramatically reduces its tendency to fracture and more than doubles its life span. Last year, Iterchimica, an Italian company, began to test a 250-meter stretch of road in Milan paved with graphene-spiked asphalt. Tests elsewhere have shown that adding graphene to paint dramatically improves corrosion resistance.

These applications would require high-quality graphene by the ton. Fortunately, the starting point for flash graphene could hardly be cheaper or more abundant: Virtually any organic matter, including coffee grounds, food scraps, old tires, and plastic bottles, can be vaporized to make the material. “We’re turning garbage into graphene,” Duy says.

Related News

• Electricity Forum News

• Grid Technologies News

High-Temperature Superconducting Cables enable lossless, high-voltage, underground transmission for grid modernization, linking renewable energy to cities with liquid nitrogen cooling, boosting efficiency, cutting emissions, reducing land use, and improving resilience against disasters and extreme weather.

Key Points

Liquid-nitrogen-cooled power cables delivering electricity with near-zero losses, lower voltage, and greater resilience.

✅ Near-lossless transmission links renewables to cities efficiently

✅ Operate at lower voltage, reducing substation size and cost

✅ Underground, compact, and resilient to extreme weather events

For most of us, transmitting power is an invisible part of modern life. You flick the switch and the light goes on.

But the way we transport electricity is vital. For us to quit fossil fuels, we will need a better grid, with macrogrid planning connecting renewable energy in the regions with cities.

Electricity grids are big, complex systems. Building new high-voltage transmission lines often spurs backlash from communities, as seen in Hydro-Que9bec power line opposition over aesthetics and land use, worried about the visual impact of the towers. And our 20th century grid loses around 10% of the power generated as heat.

One solution? Use superconducting cables for key sections of the grid. A single 17-centimeter cable can carry the entire output of several nuclear plants. Cities and regions around the world have done this to cut emissions, increase efficiency, protect key infrastructure against disasters and run powerlines underground. As Australia prepares to modernize its grid, it should follow suit with smarter electricity infrastructure initiatives seen elsewhere. It's a once-in-a-generation opportunity.

What's wrong with our tried-and-true technology?
Plenty.

The main advantage of high voltage transmission lines is they're relatively cheap.

But cheap to build comes with hidden costs later. A survey of 140 countries found the electricity currently wasted in transmission accounts for a staggering half-billion tons of carbon dioxide—each year.

These unnecessary emissions are higher than the exhaust from all the world's trucks, or from all the methane burned off at oil rigs.

Inefficient power transmission also means countries have to build extra power plants to compensate for losses on the grid.

Labor has pledged A$20 billion to make the grid ready for clean energy, and international moves such as US-Canada cross-border approvals show the scale of ambition needed. This includes an extra 10,000 kilometers of transmission lines. But what type of lines? At present, the plans are for the conventional high voltage overhead cables you see dotting the countryside.

System planning by Australia's energy market operator shows many grid-modernizing projects will use last century's technologies, the conventional high voltage overhead cables, even as Europe's HVDC expansion gathers pace across its network. If these plans proceed without considering superconductors, it will be a huge missed opportunity.

How could superconducting cables help?
Superconduction is where electrons can flow without resistance or loss. Built into power cables, it holds out the promise of lossless electricity transfer, over both long and short distances. That's important, given Australia's remarkable wind and solar resources are often located far from energy users in the cities.

High voltage superconducting cables would allow us to deliver power with minimal losses from heat or electrical resistance and with footprints at least 100 times smaller than a conventional copper cable for the same power output.

And they are far more resilient to disasters and extreme weather, as they are located underground.

Even more important, a typical superconducting cable can deliver the same or greater power at a much lower voltage than a conventional transmission cable. That means the space needed for transformers and grid connections falls from the size of a large gym to only a double garage.

Bringing these technologies into our power grid offers social, environmental, commercial and efficiency dividends.

Unfortunately, while superconductors are commonplace in Australia's medical community (where they are routinely used in MRI machines and diagnostic instruments) they have not yet found their home in our power sector.

One reason is that superconductors must be cooled to work. But rapid progress in cryogenics means you no longer have to lower their temperature almost to absolute zero (-273℃). Modern "high temperature" superconductors only need to be cooled to -200℃, which can be done with liquid nitrogen—a cheap, readily available substance.

Overseas, however, they are proving themselves daily. Perhaps the most well-known example to date is in Germany's city of Essen. In 2014, engineers installed a 10 kilovolt (kV) superconducting cable in the dense city center. Even though it was only one kilometer long, it avoided the higher cost of building a third substation in an area where there was very limited space for infrastructure. Essen's cable is unobtrusive in a meter-wide easement and only 70cm below ground.

Superconducting cables can be laid underground with a minimal footprint and cost-effectively. They need vastly less land.

A conventional high voltage overhead cable requires an easement of about 130 meters wide, with pylons up to 80 meters high to allow for safety. By contrast, an underground superconducting cable would take up an easement of six meters wide, and up to 2 meters deep.

This has another benefit: overcoming community skepticism. At present, many locals are concerned about the vulnerability of high voltage overhead cables in bushfire-prone and environmentally sensitive regions, as well as the visual impact of the large towers and lines. Communities and farmers in some regions are vocally against plans for new 85-meter high towers and power lines running through or near their land.

Climate extremes, unprecedented windstorms, excessive rainfall and lightning strikes can disrupt power supply networks, as the Victorian town of Moorabool discovered in 2021.

What about cost? This is hard to pin down, as it depends on the scale, nature and complexity of the task. But consider this—the Essen cable cost around $20m in 2014. Replacing the six 500kV towers destroyed by windstorms near Moorabool in January 2020 cost $26 million.

While superconducting cables will cost more up front, you save by avoiding large easements, requiring fewer substations (as the power is at a lower voltage), and streamlining approvals.

Where would superconductors have most effect?
Queensland. The sunshine state is planning four new high-voltage transmission projects, to be built by the mid-2030s. The goal is to link clean energy production in the north of the state with the population centers of the south, similar to sending Canadian hydropower to New York to meet demand.

Right now, there are major congestion issues between southern and central Queensland, and subsea links like Scotland-England renewable corridors highlight how to move power at scale. Strategically locating superconducting cables here would be the best location, serving to future-proof infrastructure, reduce emissions and avoid power loss.

Related News

• Electricity Forum News

• Grid Technologies News