Coalition looks to electrify GO Transit

Alberta-BC Pipeline Dispute centers on Trans Mountain expansion, diluted bitumen shipments, federal approval, spill response capacity, and electricity trade, as Alberta suspends power talks and Ottawa insists the Kinder Morgan project proceeds in national interest.

Key Points

Dispute over Trans Mountain expansion, bitumen limits, and jurisdiction between Alberta, B.C., and Canada.

✅ Alberta suspends BC electricity talks as leverage

✅ Ottawa affirms federal approval and spill response

✅ BC plans advisory panel on diluted bitumen risks

Alberta Premier Rachel Notley says her government is suspending talks with British Columbia on the purchase of electricity from the western province.

It’s the first step in Alberta’s fight against the B.C. government’s proposal to obstruct the Kinder Morgan oil pipeline expansion project by banning increased shipments of diluted bitumen to the province’s coast.

Up to $500 million annually for B.C.’s coffers from electricity exports hangs in the balance, Notley said.

“We’re prepared to do what it takes to get this pipeline built — whatever it takes,” she told a news conference Thursday after speaking with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on the phone.

Notley said she told Trudeau, who’s in Edmonton for a town-hall meeting, that the federal government needs to act decisively to end the dispute.

Speaking on Edmonton talk radio station CHED earlier in the day, Trudeau said the pipeline expansion is in the national interest and will go ahead, even as the federal government undertakes a study on electrification across sectors.

“That pipeline is going to get built,” Trudeau said. “We will stand by our decision. We will ensure that the Kinder Morgan pipeline gets built.”

B.C.’s environment minister has said his minority government plans to ban increased shipments until it can determine that shippers are prepared and able to properly clean up a spill, and, separately, has implemented an electricity rate freeze affecting consumers. He said he will establish an independent scientific advisory panel to study the issue.

The move infuriated Notley, who has accused B.C. of trying to change the rules after the federal government gave the project the green light. B.C. has the right to regulate how any spills would be cleaned up, but can’t dictate what flows through pipelines, she said.

Trudeau said Canada needs to get Alberta’s oil safely to markets other than the U.S. energy market today. He said the federal government did the research and has spent billions on spill response.

“The Kinder Morgan pipeline is not a danger to the B.C. coast,” he said.

Notley said she thanked Trudeau for his assurance that the project will go ahead, but the federal government has to do more to ensure the pipeline’s expansion.

“This is not an Alberta-B.C. issue. This is a Canada-B.C. issue,” she said. “This kind of uncertainty is bad for investment and bad for working people

“Enough is enough. We need to get these things built.”

B.C. Premier John Horgan said his government consulted Alberta and Ottawa about his province’s intentions, noting that Columbia River Treaty talks also shape regional electricity policy.

“I don’t see what the problem is,” Horgan said Thursday at a school opening north of Kelowna, B.C. “It’s within our jurisdiction to put in place regulations to protect the public interest.

“That’s what we are doing.”

He downplayed any possibility of court action or sanctions by Alberta.

“There’s nothing to take to court,” Horgan said. “We are consulting with the people of B.C. It’s way too premature to talk about those sorts of issues.

“Sabre-rattling doesn’t get you very far.”

Speaking in Ottawa, Natural Resources Minister Jim Carr wouldn’t say what Canada might do if British Columbia implements its regulation.

“That’s speculative,” said Carr.

He noted at this point, B.C. has just pledged to consult. He said the federal government heard from thousands of people before the pipeline was approved.

“That’s what they have announced — an intention to consult. We have already consulted.”

B.C.’s proposal creates more uncertainty for Kinder Morgan’s already-delayed Trans Mountain expansion project that would nearly triple the capacity of its pipeline system to 890,000 barrels a day.

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Ireland Coal-Free Electricity Record: EirGrid reports 25 days without coal on the all-island grid, as wind power, renewables, and natural gas dominated generation, cutting CO2 emissions, with Moneypoint sidelined by market competitiveness.

Key Points

It is a 25-day period when the grid used no coal, relying on gas and renewables to reduce CO2 emissions.

✅ 25 days coal-free between April 11 and May 7

✅ Gas 60%, renewables 30% of generation mix

✅ Eurostat: 6.8% drop in Ireland's CO2 emissions

The island of Ireland has gone a record length of time without using coal-fired electricity generation on its power system, Britain's week-long coal-free run providing a recent comparator, Eirgrid has confirmed.

The all-island grid operated without coal between April 11th and May 7th – a total of 25 days, it confirmed. This is the longest period of time the grid has operated without coal since the all-island electricity market was introduced in 2007, echoing Britain's record coal-free stretch seen recently.

Ireland’s largest generating station, Moneypoint in Co Clare, uses coal, with recent price spikes in Ireland fueling concerns about dispatchable capacity, as do some of the larger generation sites in Northern Ireland.

The analysis coincides with the European statistics agency, Eurostat publishing figures showing annual CO2 emissions in Ireland fell by 6.8 per cent last year; partly due to technical problems at Moneypoint.

Over the 25-day period, gas made up 60 per cent of the fuel mix, while renewable energy, mainly wind, accounted for 30 per cent, echoing UK wind surpassing coal in 2016 across the market. Coal-fired generation was available during this period but was not as competitive as other methods.

EirGrid group chief executive Mark Foley said this was “a really positive development” as coal was the most carbon intense of all electricity sources, with its share hitting record lows in the UK in recent years.

“We are acutely aware of the challenges facing the island in terms of meeting our greenhouse gas emission targets, mindful that low-carbon generation stalled in the UK in 2019, through the deployment of more renewable energy on the grid,” he added.

Last year 33 per cent of the island’s electricity came from renewable energy sources, German renewables surpassing coal and nuclear offering a parallel milestone, a new record. Coal accounted for 9 per cent of electricity generation, down from 12.9 per cent in 2017.

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UK Offshore Wind Expansion will make wind the main power source, driving renewable energy, offshore projects, smart grids, battery storage, and interconnectors to cut carbon emissions, boost exports, and attract global investment.

Key Points

A UK strategy to scale offshore wind, integrate smart grids and storage, cut emissions and drive investment and exports

✅ 30% energy target by 2030, backed by CfD support

✅ 250m industry investment and smart grid build-out

✅ Battery storage and interconnectors balance intermittency

Plans are afoot to make wind the UKs main power source for the first time in history amid ambitious targets to generate 30 percent of its total energy supply by 2030, up from 8 percent at present.

A recently inked deal will see the offshore wind industry invest 250 million into technology and infrastructure over the next 11 years, with the government committing up to 557 million in support, under a renewable energy auction that boosts wind and tidal projects, as part of its bid to lower carbon emissions to 80 percent of 1990 levels by 2050.

Offshore wind investment is crucial for meeting decarbonisation targets while increasing energy production, says Dominic Szanto, Director, Energy and Infrastructure at JLL. The governments approach over the last seven years has been to promise support to the industry, provided that cost reduction targets were met. This certainty has led to the development of larger, more efficient wind turbines which means the cost of offshore wind energy is a third of what it was in 2012.

Boosting the wind industry

Offshore wind power has been gathering pace in the UK and has grown despite COVID-19 disruptions in recent years. Earlier this year, the Hornsea One wind farm, the worlds largest offshore generator which is located off the Yorkshire coast, started producing electricity. When fully operational in 2020, the project will supply energy to over a million homes, and a further two phases are planned over the coming decade.

Over 10 gigawatts of offshore wind either already has government support or is eligible to apply for it in the near future, following a 10 GW contract award that underscores momentum, representing over 30 billion of likely investment opportunities.

Capital is coming from European utility firms and increasingly from Asian strategic investors looking to learn from the UKs experience. The attractive government support mechanism means banks are keen to lend into the sector, says Szanto.

New investment in the UKs offshore wind sector will also help to counter the growing influence of China. The UK is currently the worlds largest offshore wind market, but by 2021 it will be outstripped by China.

Through its new deal, the government hopes to increase wind power exports fivefold to 2.6 billion per year by 2030, with the UKs manufacturing and engineering skills driving projects in growth markets in Europe and Asia and in developing countries supported by the World Bank support through financing and advisory programs.

Over the next two decades, theres a massive opportunity for the UK to maintain its industry leading position by designing, constructing, operating and financing offshore wind projects, says Szanto. Building on projects such as the Hywind project in Scotland, it could become a major export to countries like the USA and Japan, where U.S. lessons from the U.K. are informing policy and coastal waters are much deeper.

Wind-powered smart grids

As wind power becomes a major contributor to the UKs energy supply, which will be increasingly made up of renewable sources in coming decades, there are key infrastructure challenges to overcome.

A real challenge is that the UKs power generation is becoming far more decentralised, with smaller power stations such as onshore wind farms and solar parks and more prosumers residential houses with rooftop solar coupled with a significant rise in intermittent generation, says Szanto. The grid was never designed to manage energy use like that.

One potential part of the solution is to use offshore wind farms in other sites in European waters.

By developing connections between wind projects from neighbouring countries, it will create super-grids that will help mitigate intermittency issues, says Szanto.

More advanced energy storage batteries will also be key for when less energy is generated on still days. There is a growing need for batteries that can store large amounts of energy and smart technology to discharge that energy. Were going through a revolution where new technology companies are working to enable a much smarter grid.

Future smart grids, based on developing technology such as blockchain, might enable the direct trading of energy between generators and consumers, with algorithms that can manage many localised sources and, critically, ensure a smooth power supply.

Investors seeking a higher-yield market are increasingly turning to battery technology, Szanto says. In a future smart grid, for example, batteries could store electricity bought cheaply at low-usage times then sold at peak usage prices or be used to provide backup energy services to other companies.

Majors investing in the transition

Its not just new energy technology companies driving change; established oil and gas companies are accelerating spending on renewable energy. Shell has committed to $1-2 billion per year on clean energy technologies out of a $25-30 billion budget, while Equinor plans to spend 15-20 percent of its budget on renewables by 2030.

The oil and gas majors have the global footprint to deliver offshore wind projects in every country, says Szanto. This could also create co-investment opportunities for other investors in the sector especially as nascent wind markets such as the U.S., where the U.S. offshore wind timeline is still developing, and Japan evolve.

European energy giants, for example, have bid to build New Yorks first offshore wind project.

As offshore wind becomes a globalised sector, with a trillion-dollar market outlook emerging, the major fuel companies will have increasingly large roles. They have the resources to undertake the years-long, cost-intensive developments of wind projects, driven by a need for new business models as the world looks beyond carbon-based fuels, says Szanto.

Oil and gas heavyweights are also making wind, solar and energy storage acquisitions BP acquired solar developer Lightsource and car-charging network Chargemaster, while Shell spent $400 million on solar and battery companies.

The public perception is that renewable energy is niche, but its now a mainstream form of energy generation., concludes Szanto.

Every nation in the world is aligned in wanting a decarbonised future. In terms of electricity, that means renewable energy and for offshore wind energy, the outlook is extremely positive.

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Minnesota 100% Carbon-Free Electricity advances renewable energy: wind, solar, hydropower, hydrogen, biogas from landfill gas and anaerobic digestion; excludes incineration in environmental justice areas; uses renewable energy credits and streamlined permitting.

Key Points

Minnesota's mandate requires utilities to deliver 100% carbon-free power by 2040 with targets and EJ safeguards.

✅ Utilities must hit 90% carbon-free by 2035; 100% by 2040.

✅ Incineration in EJ areas excluded; biogas, wind, solar allowed.

✅ Compliance via renewable credits; streamlined permitting.

Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, D, is expected to soon sign a bill establishing a clean electricity standard requiring utilities in the state to provide electricity from 100% carbon-free sources by 2040. The bill also calls for utilities to generate at least 55% of their electricity from renewable energy sources by 2035, a trajectory similar to New Mexico's clean electricity push underway this decade.

Electricity generated from landfill gas and anaerobic digestion are named as approved renewable energy technologies, but electricity generated from incinerators operating in “environmental justice areas”, reflecting concerns about renewable facilities violating pollution rules in some states, will not be counted toward the goal. Wind, solar, and certain hydropower and hydrogen energy sources are also considered renewable in the bill. 

The bill defines EJ areas as places where at least 40% of residents are not white, 35% of households have an income that’s below 200% of the federal poverty line, and 40% or more of residents over age 5 have “limited” English proficiency. Areas the U.S. state defines as “Indian country” are also considered EJ areas.

Some of the state’s largest electric utilities, like Xcel Energy and Minnesota Power, have already pledged to move to carbon-free energy, and utilities such as Alliant Energy have outlined carbon-neutral plans in the region, but this bill speeds up that goal by 10 years, Minnesota Public Radio reported. The bill calls for public utilities operating in the state to be 80% carbon-free and other electric utilities to be 60% carbon-free by 2030. All utilities must be 90% carbon-free by 2035 before ultimately hitting the 100% mark in 2040, according to the bill.  

The bill gives utilities some leniency if they demonstrate to state regulators that they can’t offer affordable power while working toward the benchmarks, acknowledging reliability challenges seen in places like California's grid during the clean energy transition. It also allows utilities to buy renewable energy credits to meet the standard instead of generating the energy themselves. 

Patrick Serfass, executive director of the American Biogas Council, said the bill will incentivize more biogas-related electricity projects, “which means the recycling of more organic material and more renewable electricity in the state. Those are all good things,” he said. ABC sees significant potential for biogas production in Minnesota, though the federal climate law has delivered mixed results for accelerating clean power deployment.

The bill also aims to streamline the permitting process for new energy projects in the state, even as some states consider limits on clean energy that would constrain utility use, and calls for higher minimum wage requirements for workers.

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FirstEnergy Nuclear Plant Closures threaten Ohio and Pennsylvania jobs, tax revenue, and grid stability, as Nuclear Matters and Brattle Group warn of higher carbon emissions and market pressures from PJM and cheap natural gas.

Key Points

Planned shutdowns of Davis-Besse, Perry, and Beaver Valley, with regional economic and carbon impacts.

✅ Over 3,000 direct jobs and local tax revenue at risk

✅ Emissions may rise until renewables scale, possibly into 2034

✅ Debate over subsidies, market design, and PJM capacity rules

A national nuclear lobby wants to remind people what's at stake for Ohio and Pennsylvania if FirstEnergy Solutions follows through with plans to shut down three nuclear plants over the next three years, including its Davis-Besse nuclear plant east of Toledo.

A report issued Monday by Nuclear Matters largely echoes concerns raised by FES, a subsidiary of FirstEnergy Corp., and other supporters of nuclear power about economic and environmental hardships and brownout risks that will likely result from the planned closures.

Along with Davis-Besse, Perry nuclear plant east of Cleveland and the twin-reactor Beaver Valley nuclear complex west of Pittsburgh are slated to close.

#google#

"If these plants close, the livelihoods of thousands of Ohio and Pennsylvania residents will disappear. The over 3,000 highly skilled individuals directly employed by these sites will leave to seek employment at other facilities still operating around the country," Lonnie Stephenson, International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers president, said in a statement distributed by Nuclear Matters. Mr. Stephenson also serves on the Nuclear Matters advocacy council.

This new report and others like it are part of an extensive campaign by nuclear energy advocates to court state and federal legislators one more time for tens of millions of dollars of financial support or at least legislation that better suits the nuclear industry. Critics allege such pleas amount to a request for massive government bailouts, arguing that deregulated electricity markets should not subsidize nuclear.

The latest report was prepared for Nuclear Matters by the Brattle Group, a firm that specializes in analyzing economic, finance, and regulatory issues for corporations, law firms, and governments.

"These announced retirements create a real urgency to learn what would happen if these plants are lost," Dean Murphy, the Brattle report's lead author, said.

More than 3,000 jobs would be lost, as would millions of dollars in tax revenue. It also could take as long as 2034 for the region's climate-altering carbon emissions to be brought back down to existing levels, based on current growth projections for solar- and wind-powered projects, and initiatives such as ending coal by 2032 by some utilities, Mr. Murphy said.

His group's report only takes into account nuclear plant operations, though. Many of those who oppose nuclear power have long pointed out that mining uranium for nuclear plant fuel generates substantial emissions, as does the process of producing steel cladding for fuel bundles and the enrichment-production of that fuel. Still, nuclear has ranked among the better performers in reports that have taken such a broader look at overall emissions.

FES has accused the regional grid operator, PJM Interconnection, of creating market conditions that favor natural gas and, thus, make it almost impossible for nuclear to compete throughout its 13-state region, a debate intensified by proposed electricity pricing changes at the federal level.

PJM has strongly denied those accusations, and has said it anticipates no shortfalls in energy distribution if those nuclear plants close prematurely, even as a recent FERC decision on grid policy drew industry criticism.

FES, citing massive losses, has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. The target dates for closures of the FES properties are May 31, 2020 for Davis-Besse; May 31, 2021 for Perry and Beaver Valley Unit 1, and Oct. 31, 2021 for Beaver Valley Unit 2.

In addition to the three FES sites, the report includes information about the Three Mile Island Unit 1 plant near Harrisburg, Pa., which Chicago-based Exelon Generation Corp. has previously announced will be shut down in 2019. That plant and others are experiencing similar difficulties the FES plants face by competing in a market radically changed by record-low natural gas prices.

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Infrastructure Security Algorithm prioritizes cyber defense for power grids and critical infrastructure, mitigating ransomware, blackout risks, and cascading failures by guiding utilities, regulators, and cyber insurers on optimal security investment allocation.

Key Points

An algorithm that optimizes security spending to cut ransomware and blackout risks across critical infrastructure.

✅ Guides utilities on optimal security allocation

✅ Uses incentives to correct human risk biases

✅ Prioritizes assets to prevent cascading outages

Millions of people could suddenly lose electricity if a ransomware attack just slightly tweaked energy flow onto the U.S. power grid, as past US utility intrusions have shown.

No single power utility company has enough resources to protect the entire grid, but maybe all 3,000 of the grid's utilities could fill in the most crucial security gaps if there were a map showing where to prioritize their security investments.

Purdue University researchers have developed an algorithm to create that map. Using this tool, regulatory authorities or cyber insurance companies could establish a framework for protecting the U.S. power grid that guides the security investments of power utility companies to parts of the grid at greatest risk of causing a blackout if hacked.

Power grids are a type of critical infrastructure, which is any network - whether physical like water systems or virtual like health care record keeping - considered essential to a country's function and safety. The biggest ransomware attacks in history have happened in the past year, affecting most sectors of critical infrastructure in the U.S. such as grain distribution systems in the food and agriculture sector and the Colonial Pipeline, which carries fuel throughout the East Coast, prompting increased military preparation for grid hacks in the U.S.

With this trend in mind, Purdue researchers evaluated the algorithm in the context of various types of critical infrastructure in addition to the power sector, including electricity-sector IoT devices that interface with grid operations. The goal is that the algorithm would help secure any large and complex infrastructure system against cyberattacks.

"Multiple companies own different parts of infrastructure. When ransomware hits, it affects lots of different pieces of technology owned by different providers, so that's what makes ransomware a problem at the state, national and even global level," said Saurabh Bagchi, a professor in the Elmore Family School of Electrical and Computer Engineering and Center for Education and Research in Information Assurance and Security at Purdue. "When you are investing security money on large-scale infrastructures, bad investment decisions can mean your power grid goes out, or your telecommunications network goes out for a few days."

Protecting infrastructure from hacks by improving security investment decisions

The researchers tested the algorithm in simulations of previously reported hacks to four infrastructure systems: a smart grid, industrial control system, e-commerce platform and web-based telecommunications network. They found that use of this algorithm results in the most optimal allocation of security investments for reducing the impact of a cyberattack.

The team's findings appear in a paper presented at this year's IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy, the premier conference in the area of computer security. The team comprises Purdue professors Shreyas Sundaram and Timothy Cason and former PhD students Mustafa Abdallah and Daniel Woods.

"No one has an infinite security budget. You must decide how much to invest in each of your assets so that you gain a bump in the security of the overall system," Bagchi said.

The power grid, for example, is so interconnected that the security decisions of one power utility company can greatly impact the operations of other electrical plants. If the computers controlling one area's generators don't have adequate security protection, as seen when Russian hackers accessed control rooms at U.S. utilities, then a hack to those computers would disrupt energy flow to another area's generators, forcing them to shut down.

Since not all of the grid's utilities have the same security budget, it can be hard to ensure that critical points of entry to the grid's controls get the most investment in security protection.

The algorithm that Purdue researchers developed would incentivize each security decision maker to allocate security investments in a way that limits the cumulative damage a ransomware attack could cause. An attack on a single generator, for instance, would have less impact than an attack on the controls for a network of generators, which sophisticated grid-disruption malware can target at scale, rather than for the protection of a single generator.

Building an algorithm that considers the effects of human behavior

Bagchi's research shows how to increase cybersecurity in ways that address the interconnected nature of critical infrastructure but don't require an overhaul of the entire infrastructure system to be implemented.

As director of Purdue's Center for Resilient Infrastructures, Systems, and Processes, Bagchi has worked with the U.S. Department of Defense, Northrop Grumman Corp., Intel Corp., Adobe Inc., Google LLC and IBM Corp. on adopting solutions from his research. Bagchi's work has revealed the advantages of establishing an automatic response to attacks, and analyses like Symantec's Dragonfly report highlight energy-sector risks, leading to key innovations against ransomware threats, such as more effective ways to make decisions about backing up data.

There's a compelling reason why incentivizing good security decisions would work, Bagchi said. He and his team designed the algorithm based on findings from the field of behavioral economics, which studies how people make decisions with money.

"Before our work, not much computer security research had been done on how behaviors and biases affect the best defense mechanisms in a system. That's partly because humans are terrible at evaluating risk and an algorithm doesn't have any human biases," Bagchi said. "But for any system of reasonable complexity, decisions about security investments are almost always made with humans in the loop. For our algorithm, we explicitly consider the fact that different participants in an infrastructure system have different biases."

To develop the algorithm, Bagchi's team started by playing a game. They ran a series of experiments analyzing how groups of students chose to protect fake assets with fake investments. As in past studies in behavioral economics, they found that most study participants guessed poorly which assets were the most valuable and should be protected from security attacks. Most study participants also tended to spread out their investments instead of allocating them to one asset even when they were told which asset is the most vulnerable to an attack.

Using these findings, the researchers designed an algorithm that could work two ways: Either security decision makers pay a tax or fine when they make decisions that are less than optimal for the overall security of the system, or security decision makers receive a payment for investing in the most optimal manner.

"Right now, fines are levied as a reactive measure if there is a security incident. Fines or taxes don't have any relationship to the security investments or data of the different operators in critical infrastructure," Bagchi said.

In the researchers' simulations of real-world infrastructure systems, the algorithm successfully minimized the likelihood of losing assets to an attack that would decrease the overall security of the infrastructure system.

Bagchi's research group is working to make the algorithm more scalable and able to adapt to an attacker who may make multiple attempts to hack into a system. The researchers' work on the algorithm is funded by the National Science Foundation, the Wabash Heartland Innovation Network and the Army Research Lab.

Cybersecurity is an area of focus through Purdue's Next Moves, a set of initiatives that works to address some of the greatest technology challenges facing the U.S. Purdue's cybersecurity experts offer insights and assistance to improve the protection of power plants, electrical grids and other critical infrastructure.

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