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BC Hydro Trespassing Surge highlights risky social media stunts at dams and power stations, with restricted areas breached for selfies, electrocution hazards ignored, and safety signage violated across Buntzen Lake, Jones Lake, and Jordan River.

Key Points

A spike in illegal entries at BC Hydro sites for social media, increasing electrocution and drowning risks.

✅ 200% rise in trespassing over five years

✅ Risks: electrocution, drowning, deadly falls

✅ Obey signage; avoid restricted dam and substation areas

More and more daredevils are climbing onto dangerous dams and power stations to gain likes and social media followers, according to a new report from BC Hydro.

The power provider says it's seen a 200 per cent uptick in trespassing into restricted areas over the past five years, with many of the incidents posted onto sites like YouTube, Facebook and Instagram.

"It's concerning for us because our infrastructure has risk with it," said David Conway, a community relations manager for BC Hydro.

"There's a risk of electrocution in regards to our transmission towers and our substations ... and people can be severely injured, as seen in serious injuries cases, or killed," he said.

The company released a report Tuesday, noting specific incidents of users trespassing onto sites at Buntzen Lake in Anmore, Jones Lake in the Fraser Valley and Jordan River near Victoria; it has also been issuing Site C updates during the pandemic. The incidents ranged from climbing transmission towers to swimming in restricted areas at dam sites.

In a separate matter, an external investigation at Manitoba Hydro has examined alleged assaults by workers.

Conway says annual incidents climbed from a handful to about one dozen, but BC Hydro expects the figures to be even higher. He says many more events likely go unreported.

The report ties the increase in incidents to the pursuit of "social media glory." Between 2011 and 2017, at least 259 people were killed worldwide in selfie-related incidents, according to the Journal of Family Medicine and Primary Care, and a knowledge gap in electrical safety remains a factor. Many of the incidents involved water, electrical equipment or dangerous heights.

In 2018, three social media personalities died after falling off a cliff at Shannon Falls near Squamish, B.C.

North Shore Rescue attributes about 30 per cent of its calls to outdoor users attempting to capture content for social media.

Survey results highlighted in the BC Hydro report show that 15 per cent of British Columbians admit to putting themselves in a dangerous position "to achieve the 'perfect' shot."

Awareness also influences careers, as many young Canadians say they would work in electricity if they knew more.

The survey was conducted online by 800 B.C. residents. For comparison purposes, a probability sample of the same size would yield a margin of error of plus or minus 3.5 per cent, 19 times out of 20.

During the pandemic, the U.S. grid overseer issued a coronavirus warning to highlight operational risks.

Risky activities include standing at the edge of a cliff, knowingly disobeying safety signage or trespassing, or taking a selfie from a dangerous height.

Two per cent of British Columbians admit to injuring themselves in the name of a selfie.

"We want people to stay safe. We want to remind the public to stay a safe distance away from our infrastructure, and follow safety guidance near downed lines, as electricity and generating facilities can be dangerous," said Conway.

BC Hydro is urging all visitors to obey signage, steer clear of power-generating equipment and to stay on designated trails.

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Municipal Renewable Energy Procurement surged as cities contracted 3.7 GW of solar and wind, leveraging green tariffs, community solar, and utility partnerships across the Southeast, led by Houston, RMI, and WRI data.

Key Points

The process by which cities contract solar and wind via utilities or green tariffs to meet climate goals.

✅ 3.7 GW procured in 2020, nearly 25% year-over-year growth

✅ Houston runs city ops on 500 MW solar, a record purchase

✅ Southeast cities use green tariffs and community solar

Cities around the country bought more renewable energy last year than ever before, reflecting how renewables may soon provide one-fourth of U.S. electricity across the grid, with some of the most remarkable projects in the Southeast, according to new data unveiled Thursday.

Even amid the pandemic, about eight dozen municipalities contracted to buy nearly 3.7 gigawatts of mostly solar and wind energy — enough to power more than 800,000 homes. The figure is almost a quarter higher than the year before.

Half of the cites listed as “most noteworthy” in Thursday’s release —  from research groups Rocky Mountain Institute and World Resources Institute — are in the region that stretches from Texas to Washington, D.C. 

Houston stands out for the sheer enormity of its purchase: In July, it began powering city operations entirely from nearly 500 megawatts of solar power — the largest municipal purchase of renewable energy ever in the United States, as renewable electricity surpassed coal nationwide.

The groups also feature smaller deals in North Carolina and Tennessee, achieved through a utility partnership called a green tariff.

“We wanted to recognize that Nashville and Charlotte were really blazing a new trail,” said Stephen Abbott, principal at the Rocky Mountain Institute.

And the nation’s capital shows how renewable energy can be a source of revenue: It’s leasing out its public transit station rooftops for 10 megawatts of community solar.

All of these strategies will be necessary for scores of U.S. cities to meet their ambitious climate goals, researchers believe. An interactive clean energy targets tracker shows all 95 clean energy procurements from the year in detail.

Tracker 
Even before former President Donald Trump promised to remove the United States from the Paris Climate Accord, a lack of federal action on climate left a void that some cities and counties were beginning to fill, as renewables hit a record 28% in a recent month. In 2015, the first year tracked by researchers at the Rocky Mountain Institute and the World Resources Institute, municipalities contracted to buy more than 1 gigawatt of wind, solar and other forms of clean energy. 

But when Trump officially set in motion the withdrawal from the climate agreement, the ranks of municipalities dedicated to 100% clean energy multiplied. Today there are nearly 200 of them. The growth in activity last year reflects, in part, that surge of new pledges.

“It takes a while to get city staff up to speed and understand the options, and create the roadmap and then start executing,” Abbott said. “There is a bit of a lag, but we’re starting to see the impact.”

Even in Houston — one of the earliest to begin procuring renewable energy — there has been a steep learning curve as market forces change and prices drop, including cheaper solar batteries shaping procurement strategies, said Lara Cottingham, Houston’s chief of staff and chief sustainability officer.

No matter how well resourced and educated their staff, cities have to clear a thicket of structural, political and economic challenges to procure renewable energy. Most don’t own their own sources of power. Nearly all face budget constraints. Few have enough land or government rooftops to meet their goals within city limits.

“Cities face a situation where it’s a square peg in a round hole,” Cottingham said.

The hurdles are especially steep in much of the Southeast, where only publicly regulated utilities can sell electricity to retail customers, even large ones such as major cities. That’s where a green tariff regime comes in: Cities can purchase clean energy from a third party, such as a solar company, using the utility as a go-between.

Early last year, Charlotte became the largest city to use such a program, partnering with Duke Energy and two North Carolina solar developers to build a solar farm 50 miles north in Iredell County. At first, the city will pay a premium for the energy, but in the latter half of the 20-year contract, as gas prices rise, it will save money compared to business as usual.

“Over the course of 20 years, it’s projected we would save about $2 million,” Katie Riddle, sustainability analyst with Charlotte, told the Energy News Network last year.

The growing size of projects, innovative partnerships like green tariff programs, and the improving economics all give Abbott hope that renewable energy investments from cities will only grow — even with the Trump presidency over and the country back in the Paris agreement.

And when cities meet their goals for procuring renewable energy for their own operations, they must then turn to an even bigger task: reducing the carbon footprint of every person in their jurisdiction with broader decarbonization strategies and community engagement.

“The city needs to do its part for sure,” said Houston’s Cottingham. “Then we have this challenge of how do we get everyone else to.”

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EU Solar Impact on Electricity Prices highlights how rising solar PV penetration drives negative pricing, shifts peak hours, pressures wholesale markets, and challenges grid balancing, interconnection, and flexibility amid changing demand and renewables growth.

Key Points

Explains how rising solar PV cuts wholesale prices, shifts negative-price hours, and strains grid flexibility.

✅ Negative pricing events surge with higher solar penetration.

✅ Afternoon price dips replace night-time wind-led lows.

✅ Grid balancing, interconnectors, and flexibility become critical.

The latest EU electricity market report has confirmed the affect deeper penetration of solar is having on wholesale electricity prices more broadly.

The Quarterly Report on European Electricity Markets for the final three months of last year noted the number of periods of negative electricity pricing doubled from 2019, to almost 1,600 such events, as global renewables set new records in deployment across markets.

Having experienced just three negative price events in 2019, the Netherlands recorded almost 100 last year “amid a dramatic increase in solar PV capacity,” in the nation, according to the report.

Whilst stressing the exceptional nature of the Covid-19 pandemic on power consumption patterns, the quarterly update also noted a shift in the hours during which negative electric pricing occurred in renewables poster child Germany. Previously such events were most common at night, during periods of high wind speed and low demand, but 2020 saw a switch to afternoon negative pricing. “Thus,” stated the report, “solar PV became the main driver behind prices falling into negative territory in the German market in 2020, as Germany's solar boost accelerated, and also put afternoon prices under pressure generally.”

The report also highlighted two instances of scarce electricity–in mid September and on December 9–as evidence of the problems associated with accommodating a rising proportion of intermittent clean energy capacity into the grid, and called for more joined-up cross-border power networks, amid pushback from Russian oil and gas across the continent.

Rising solar generation–along with higher gas output, year on year–also helped the Netherlands generate a net surplus of electricity last year, after being a net importer “for many years.” The EU report also noted a beneficial effect of rising solar generation capacity on Hungary‘s national electricity account, and cited a solar “boom” in that country and Poland, mirroring rapid solar PV growth in China in recent years.

With Covid-19 falls in demand helping renewables generate more of Europe's electricity (39%) than fossil fuels (36%) for the first time, as renewables surpassed fossil fuels across Europe, the market report observed the 5% of the bloc's power produced from solar closed in on the 6% accounted for by hard coal. In the final three months of the year, European solar output rose 12%, year on year, to 18 TWh and “the increase was almost single-handedly driven by Spain,” the study added.

With coal and lignite-fired power plunging 22% last year across the bloc, it is estimated the European power sector reduced its carbon footprint 14% as part of Europe's green surge although the quarterly report warned cold weather, lower wind speeds and rising gas prices in the opening months of this year are likely to see carbon emissions rebound.

There was good news on the transport front, though, with the report stating the scale of the European “electrically-charged vehicle” fleet doubled in 2020, to 2 million, with almost half a million of the new registrations arriving in the final months of the year. That meant cars with plug sockets accounted for a remarkable 17% of new purchases in Q4, twice the proportion seen in China and a slice of the pie six times bigger than such products claimed in the U.S.

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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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France Nuclear Heatwave Restrictions signal reduced nuclear power along the Rhone River as EDF imposes output limits due to high water temperatures, grid needs, with minimal price impact amid strong solar and exports.

Key Points

Temporary EDF output limits at Rhone River reactors due to hot water, protecting ecosystems and grid reliability.

✅ EDF expects halved output at Bugey and Saint Alban.

✅ Cuts align with water temperature and discharge rules.

✅ Weekend midday curtailments offset by solar supply.

The high temperature warning has come early this year but will affect fewer nuclear power plants. High temperatures could halve nuclear power production, with river temperature limits at plants along France's Rhone River this week. 

Output restrictions are expected at two nuclear plants in eastern France due to high temperature forecasts, nuclear operator EDF said. It comes several days ahead of a similar warning that was made last year but will affect fewer plants, and follows a period when power demand has held firm during lockdowns across Europe.

The hot weather is likely to halve the available power supply from the 3.6 GW Bugey plant from 13 July and the 2.6 GW Saint Alban plant from 16 July, the operator said.

However, production will be at least 1.8 GW at Bugey and 1.3 GW at Saint Alban to meet grid requirements, and may change according to grid needs, the operator said.

Kpler analyst Emeric de Vigan said the restrictions were likely to have little effect on output in practice. Cuts are likely only at the weekend or midday when solar output was at its peak so the impact on power prices would be slim.

He said the situation would need monitoring in the coming weeks, however, noting it was unusually early in the summer for nuclear-powered France to see such restrictions imposed.

Water temperatures at the Bugey plant already eclipsed the initial threshold for restrictions on 9 July, as European power hits records during the heatwave. They are currently forecast to peak next week and then drop again, Refinitiv data showed.

"France is currently net exporting large amounts of power – and, despite a nuclear power dispute with Germany, single nuclear units' supply restrictions will not have the same effect as last year," Refinitiv analyst Nathalie Gerl said.

The Garonne River in southern France has the highest potential for critical levels of warming, but its Golfech plant is currently offline for maintenance until mid-August, as Europe faces nuclear losses, the data showed.

"(The restrictions were) to be expected and it will probably occur more often," Greenpeace campaigner Roger Spautz said.

"The authorities must stick to existing regulations for water discharges. Otherwise, the ecosystems will be even more affected," he added.

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2040 Energy Outlook projects a shifting energy mix as renewables scale, EV adoption accelerates, and IEA forecasts plateauing oil demand alongside rising natural gas, highlighting policy, efficiency, and decarbonization trends that shape global consumption.

Key Points

A data-driven view of future energy mix, covering renewables, fossil fuels, EVs, oil demand, and policy impacts.

✅ Renewables reach 16-30% by 2040, higher with strong policy support.

✅ Fossil fuels remain dominant, with oil flat and natural gas rising.

✅ EV share surges, cutting oil use; efficiency curbs demand growth.

Which is more plausible: flying taxis, wind turbine arrays stretching miles into the ocean, and a solar roof on every house--or a scorched-earth, flooded post-Apocalyptic world? 

We have no way of peeking into the future, but we can certainly imagine it. There is plenty of information about where the world is headed and regardless of how reliable this information is—or isn’t—we never stop wondering. Will the energy world of 20 years from now be better or worse than the world we live in now? 

The answer may very well lie in the observable trends.

A Growing Population

The global population is growing, and it will continue to grow in the next two decades. This will drive a steady growth in energy demand, at about 1 percent per year, according to the International Energy Agency.

This modest rate of growth is good news for all who are concerned about the future of the planet. Parts of the world are trying to reduce their energy consumption, and this should have a positive effect on the carbon footprint of humanity. The energy thirst of most parts of the world will continue growing, however, hence the overall growth.

The world’s population is currently growing at a rate of a little over 1 percent annually. This rate of growth has been slowing since its peak in the 1960s and forecasts suggest that it will continue to slow. Growth in energy demand, on the other hand, may at some point stop moving in tune with population growth trends as affluence in some parts of the world grows. The richer people get, the more energy they need. So, to the big question: where will this energy come from?

The Rise of Renewables

For all the headline space they have been claiming, it may come as a disappointing surprise to many that renewable energy, excluding hydropower, to date accounts for just 14 percent of the global primary energy mix. 

Certainly, adoption of solar and wind energy has been growing in leaps and bounds, with their global share doubling in five years in many markets, but unless governments around the world commit a lot more money and effort to renewable energy, by 2040, solar and wind’s share in the energy mix will still only rise to about 16 to 17 percent. That’s according to the only comprehensive report on the future of energy that collates data from all the leading energy authorities in the world, by non-profit Resources for the Future.

The growth in renewables adoption, however, would be a lot more impressive if governments do make serious commitments. Under that scenario, the share of renewables will double to over 30 percent by 2040, echoing milestones like over 30% of global electricity reached recently: that’s the median rate of all authoritative forecasts. Amongst them, the adoption rates of renewables vary between 15 percent and 61 percent by 2040.

Even the most bullish of the forecasts on renewables is still far below the 100-percent renewable future many would like to fantasize about, although BNEF’s 50% by 2050 outlook points to what could be possible in the power sector. 

But in 2040, most of the world’s energy will still come from fossil fuels.

EV Energy

Here, forecasters are more optimistic. Again, there is a wide variation between forecasts, but in each and every one of them the share of electric vehicles on the world’s roads in 2040 is a lot higher than the meagre 1 percent of the global car fleet EVs constitute today.
Related: Gas Prices Languish As Storage Falls To Near-Record Lows

Government policy will be the key, as U.S. progress toward 30% wind and solar shows how policy steers the power mix that EVs ultimately depend on. Bans of internal combustion engines will go a long way toward boosting EV adoption, which is why some forecasters expect electric cars to come to account for more than 50 percent of cars on the road in 2040. Others, however, are more guarded in their forecasts, seeing their share of the global fleet at between 16 percent and a little over 40 percent.

Many pin their hopes for a less emission-intensive future on electric cars. Indeed, as the number of EVs rises, they displace ICE vehicles and, respectively, the emission-causing oil that fuels for ICE cars are made from.  It should be a no brainer that the more EVs we drive, the less emissions we produce. Unfortunately, this is not necessarily the case: China is the world’s biggest EV market, and its solar PV expansion has been rapid, it has the most EVs—including passenger cars and buses—but it is also one of the biggest emitters.

Still, by 2040, if the more optimistic forecasts come true, the world will be consuming less oil than it is consuming now: anywhere from 1.2 million bpd to 20 million bpd less, the latter case envisaging an all-electric global fleet in 2040. 

This Ain’t Your Daddy’s Oil

No, it ain’t. It’s your grandchildren’s oil, for good or for bad. The vision of an oil-free world where renewable power is both abundant and cheap enough to replace all the ways in which crude oil and natural gas are used will in 2040 still be just that--a vision, with practical U.S. grid constraints underscoring the challenges. Even the most optimistic energy scenarios for two decades from now see them as the dominant source of energy, with forecasts ranging between 60 percent and 79 percent. While these extremes are both below the over-80 percent share fossil fuels have in the world’s energy mix, they are well above 50 percent, and in the U.S. renewables are projected to reach about one-fourth of electricity soon, even as fossil fuels remain foundational.

Still, there is good news. Fuel efficiency alone will reduce oil demand significantly by 2040. In fact, according to the IEA, demand will plateau at a little over 100 million bpd by the mid-2030s. Combined with the influx of EVs many expect, the world of 20 years from now may indeed be consuming a lot less oil than the world of today. It will, however, likely consume a lot more natural gas. There is simply no way around fossil fuels, not yet. Unless a miracle of politics happens (complete with a ripple effect that will cost millions of people their jobs) in 2040 we will be as dependent on oil and gas as we are but we will hopefully breathe cleaner air.

By Irina Slav for Oilprice.com

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