Used nuclear energy could be on its way here

Covid-19 Energy Transition and Machine Learning reshape climate change policy, electricity planning, and grid operations, from demand forecasting and decarbonization strategies in Europe to scalable electrification modeling and renewable integration across Africa.

Key Points

How the pandemic reshapes energy policy and how ML improves planning, demand forecasts, and grid reliability in Africa.

✅ Pandemic-driven demand shifts strain grid operations and markets

✅ Policy momentum risks rollback; favor future-oriented decarbonization

✅ ML boosts demand prediction, electrification, and grid reliability in Africa

The impact of Covid-19 on the energy system was discussed in an online climate change workshop that also considered how machine learning can help electricity planning in Africa.

This year’s International Conference on Learning Representations event included a workshop held by the Climate Change AI group of academics and artificial intelligence industry representatives, which considered how machine learning can help tackle climate change and highlighted advances by European electricity prediction specialists working in this field.

Bjarne Steffen, senior researcher at the energy politics group at ETH Zürich, shared his insights at the workshop on how Covid-19 and the accompanying economic crisis are affecting recently introduced ‘green’ policies. “The crisis hit at a time when energy policies were experiencing increasing momentum towards climate action, especially in Europe, and in proposals to invest in smarter electricity infrastructure for long-term resilience,” said Steffen, who added the coronavirus pandemic has cast into doubt the implementation of such progressive policies.

The academic said there was a risk of overreacting to the public health crisis, as far as progress towards climate change goals was concerned.

Lobbying

“Many interest groups from carbon-intensive industries are pushing to remove the emissions trading system and other green policies,” said Steffen. “In cases where those policies are having a serious impact on carbon-emitting industries, governments should offer temporary waivers during this temporary crisis, instead of overhauling the regulatory structure.”

However, the ETH Zürich researcher said any temptation to impose environmental conditions to bail-outs for carbon-intensive industries should be resisted. “While it is tempting to push a green agenda in the relief packages, tying short-term environmental conditions to bail-outs is impractical, given the uncertainty in how long this crisis will last,” he said. “It is better to include provisions that will give more control over future decisions to decarbonize industries, such as the government taking equity shares in companies.”

Steffen shared with pv magazine readers an article published in Joule which can be accessed here, and which articulates his arguments about how Covid-19 could affect the energy transition.

Covid-19 in the U.K.

The electricity system in the U.K. is also being affected by Covid-19, even as the U.S. electric grid grapples with climate risks, according to Jack Kelly, founder of London-based, not-for-profit, greenhouse gas emission reduction research laboratory Open Climate Fix.

“The crisis has reduced overall electricity use in the U.K.,” said Kelly. “Residential use has increased but this has not offset reductions in commercial and industrial loads.”

Steve Wallace, a power system manager at British electricity system operator National Grid ESO recently told U.K. broadcaster the BBC electricity demand has fallen 15-20% across the U.K. The National Grid ESO blog has stated the fall-off makes managing grid functions such as voltage regulation more challenging.

Open Climate Fix’s Kelly noted even events such as a nationally-coordinated round of applause for key workers was followed by a dramatic surge in demand, stating: “On April 16, the National Grid saw a nearly 1 GW spike in electricity demand over 10 minutes after everyone finished clapping for healthcare workers and went about the rest of their evenings.”

Climate Change AI workshop panelists also discussed the impact machine learning could have on improving electricity planning in Africa. The Electricity Growth and Use in Developing Economies (e-Guide) initiative funded by fossil fuel philanthropic organization the Rockefeller Foundation aims to use data to improve the planning and operation of electricity systems in developing countries.

E-Guide members Nathan Williams, an assistant professor at the Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT) in New York state, and Simone Fobi, a PhD student at Columbia University in NYC, spoke about their work at the Climate Change AI workshop, which closed on Thursday. Williams emphasized the importance of demand prediction, saying: “Uncertainty around current and future electricity consumption leads to inefficient planning. The weak link for energy planning tools is the poor quality of demand data.”

Fobi said: “We are trying to use machine learning to make use of lower-quality data and still be able to make strong predictions.”

The market maturity of individual solar home systems and PV mini-grids in Africa mean more complex electrification plan modeling is required, similar to integrating AI data centers into Canada's grids at scale.

Modeling

“When we are doing [electricity] access planning, we are trying to figure out where the demand will be and how much demand will exist so we can propose the right technology,” added Fobi. “This makes demand estimation crucial to efficient planning.”

Unlike many traditional modeling approaches, machine learning is scalable and transferable. Rochester’s Williams has been using data from nations such as Kenya, which are more advanced in their electrification efforts, to train machine learning models to make predictions to guide electrification efforts in countries which are not as far down the track.

Williams also discussed work being undertaken by e-Guide members at the Colorado School of Mines, which uses nighttime satellite imagery and machine learning to assess the reliability of grid infrastructure in India, where new algorithms to prevent ransomware-induced blackouts are also advancing.

Rural power

Another e-Guide project, led by Jay Taneja at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst – and co-funded by the Energy and Economic Growth program on development spending based at Berkeley – uses satellite imagery to identify productive uses of electricity in rural areas by detecting pollution signals from diesel irrigation pumps.

Though good quality data is often not readily available for Africa, Williams added, it does exist.

“We have spent years developing trusting relationships with utilities,” said the RIT academic. “Once our partners realize the value proposition we can offer, they are enthusiastic about sharing their data … We can’t do machine learning without high-quality data and this requires that organizations can effectively collect, organize, store and work with data. Data can transform the electricity sector, as shown by Canadian projects to use AI for energy savings, but capacity building is crucial.”

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EV Grid Capacity Management shows how smart charging, load balancing, and off-peak pricing align with utility demand response, DC fast charging networks, and renewable integration to keep national electricity infrastructure reliable as EV adoption scales

Key Points

EV Grid Capacity Management schedules charging and balances load to keep EV demand within utility capacity.

✅ Off-peak pricing and time-of-use tariffs shift charging demand.

✅ Smart chargers enable demand response and local load balancing.

✅ Gradual EV adoption allows utilities to plan upgrades efficiently.

One of the most frequent concerns you will see from electric vehicle haters is that the electricity grid can’t possibly cope with all cars becoming EVs, or that EVs will crash the grid entirely. However, they haven’t done the math properly. The grids in most developed nations will be just fine, so long as the demand is properly management. Here’s how.

The biggest mistake the social media keyboard warriors make is the very strange assumption that all cars could be charging at once. In the UK, there are currently 32,697,408 cars according to the UK Department of Transport. The UK national grid had a capacity of 75.8GW in 2020. If all the cars in the UK were EVs and charging at the same time at 7kW (the typical home charger rate), they would need 229GW – three times the UK grid capacity. If they were all charging at 50kW (a common public DC charger rate), they would need 1.6TW – 21.5 times the UK grid capacity. That sounds unworkable, and this is usually the kind of thinking behind those who claim the UK grid can't cope with EVs.

What they don’t seem to realize is that the chances of every single car charging all at once are infinitesimally low. Their arguments seem to assume that nobody ever drives their car, and just charges it all the time. If you look at averages, the absurdity of this position becomes particularly clear. The distance each UK car travels per year has been slowly dropping, and was 7,400 miles on average in 2019, again according to the UK Department of Transport. An EV will do somewhere between 2.5 and 4.5 miles per kWh on average, so let’s go in the middle and say 3.5 miles. In other words, each car will consume an average of 2,114kWh per year. Multiply that by the number of cars, and you get 69.1TWh. But the UK national grid produced 323TWh of power in 2019, so that is only 21.4% of the energy it produced for the year. Before you argue that’s still a problem, the UK grid produced 402TWh in 2005, which is more than the 2019 figure plus charging all the EVs in the UK put together. The capacity is there, and energy storage can help manage EV-driven peaks as well.

Let’s do the same calculation for the USA, where an EV boom is about to begin and planning matters. In 2020, there were 286.9 million cars registered in America. In 2020, while the US grid had 1,117.5TW of utility electricity capacity and 27.7GW of solar, according to the US Energy Information Administration. If all the cars were EVs charging at 7kW, they would need 2,008.3TW – nearly twice the grid capacity. If they charged at 50kW, they would need 14,345TW – 12.8 times the capacity.

However, in 2020, the US grid generated 4,007TWh of electricity. Americans drive further on average than Brits – 13,500 miles per year, according to the US Department of Transport’s Federal Highway Administration. That means an American car, if it were an EV, would need 3,857kWh per year, assuming the average efficiency figures above. If all US cars were EVs, they would need a total of 1,106.6TWh, which is 27.6% of what the American grid produced in 2020. US electricity consumption hasn’t shrunk in the same way since 2005 as it has in the UK, but it is clearly not unfeasible for all American cars to be EVs. The US grid could cope too, even as state power grids face challenges during the transition.

After all, the transition to electric isn’t going to happen overnight. The sales of EVs are growing fast, with for example more plug-ins sold in the UK in 2021 so far than the whole of the previous decade (2010-19) put together. Battery-electric vehicles are closing in on 10% of the market in the UK, and they were already 77.5% of new cars sold in Norway in September 2021. But that is new cars, leaving the vast majority of cars on the road fossil fuel powered. A gradual introduction is essential, too, because an overnight switchover would require a massive ramp up in charge point installation, particularly devices for people who don’t have the luxury of home charging. This will require considerable investment, but could be served by lots of chargers on street lamps, which allegedly only cost £1,000 ($1,300) each to install, usually with no need for extra wiring.

This would be a perfectly viable way to provide charging for most people. For example, as I write this article, my own EV is attached to a lamppost down the street from my house. It is receiving 5.5kW costing 24p (32 cents) per kWh through SimpleSocket, a service run by Ubitricity (now owned by Shell) and installed by my local London council, Barnet. I plugged in at 11am and by 7.30pm, my car (which was on about 28% when I started) will have around 275 miles of range – enough for a couple more weeks. It will have cost me around £12 ($16) – way less than a tank of fossil fuel. It was a super-easy process involving the scanning of a QR code and entering of a credit card, very similar to many parking systems nowadays. If most lampposts had one of these charging plugs, not having off-street parking would be no problem at all for owning an EV.

With most EVs having a range of at least 200 miles these days, and the average mileage per day being 20 miles in the UK (the 7,400-mile annual figure divided by 365 days) or 37 miles in the USA, EVs won’t need charging more than once a week or even every week or two. On average, therefore, the grids in most developed nations will be fine. The important consideration is to balance the load, because if too many EVs are charging at once, there could be a problem, and some regions like California are looking to EVs for grid stability as part of the solution. This will be a matter of incentivizing charging during off-peak times such as at night, or making peak charging more expensive. It might also be necessary to have the option to reduce charging power rates locally, while providing the ability to prioritize where necessary – such as emergency services workers. But the problem is one of logistics, not impossibility.

There will be grids around the world that are not in such a good place for an EV revolution, at least not yet, and some critics argue that policies like Canada's 2035 EV mandate are unrealistic. But to argue that widespread EV adoption will be an insurmountable catastrophe for electricity supply in developed nations is just plain wrong. So long as the supply is managed correctly to make use of spare capacity when it’s available as much as possible, the grids will cope just fine.

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BC Hydro Rate Freeze delivers immediate relief on electricity rates in British Columbia, reversing a planned 3% hike, as BCUC oversight, a utility review, and Site C project debates shape provincial energy policy.

Key Points

A one-year provincial policy halting BC Hydro electricity rate hikes while a utility review finds cost savings.

✅ Freeze replaces planned 3% hike approved by BCUC.

✅ Government to conduct comprehensive BC Hydro review.

✅ Critics warn $150M revenue loss impacts capital projects.

British Columbia's NDP government has announced it will freeze BC Hydro rates effective immediately, fulfilling a key election promise.

Energy, Mines and Petroleum Resources Minister Michelle Mungall says hydro rates have gone up by more than 24 per cent in the last four years and by more than 70 per cent since 2001, reflecting proposals such as a 3.75% increase over two years announced previously.

"After years of escalating electricity costs, British Columbians deserve a break on their bills," Mungall said in a news release.

BC Hydro had been approved by the B.C. Utilities Commission to increase the rate by three per cent next year, but Mungall said it will pull back its request in order to comply with the freeze.

In the meantime, the government says it will undertake a comprehensive review of the utility meant to identify cost-savings measures for customers often asked to pay an extra $2 a month on electricity bills.

The Liberal critic, Tracy Redies, says the one year rate freeze is going to cost BC Hydro, calling it a distraction from the bigger issue of the future of the Site C project and the oversight of a BC Hydro fund surplus as well.

"A one year rate freeze costs Hydro $150 million," Redies said. "That means there's $150 million less to invest in capital projects and other investments that the utility needs to make."

"This is putting off decisions that should be made today to the future."

Recommendations from the review — including possible new rates — will be implemented starting in April 2019.

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TotalEnergies Africa Energy Strategy 2025 spotlights oil, gas, LNG, and renewables, with investments in Namibia, Congo, Mozambique, Uganda, Morocco, and South Africa, driving upstream growth, clean energy, and energy transition partnerships.

Key Points

An investment roadmap uniting oil, gas, LNG, and renewables to speed Africa's upstream growth and energy transition.

✅ Keynote by Mike Sangster at IAE Paris 2025.

✅ Oil, gas, LNG projects across Namibia, Congo, Mozambique, Uganda.

✅ Scaling renewables: solar, wind, green ammonia for export.

Mike Sangster, Senior Vice President for Africa at TotalEnergies, will play a pivotal role in the upcoming Invest in African Energy (IAE) Forum, which will take place in Paris on May 13-14, 2025. As a key figure in one of the world’s largest energy companies, Sangster's participation in the forum is expected to offer crucial insights into Africa’s evolving energy landscape, particularly in the areas of oil, gas, and renewable energy.

TotalEnergies' Role in Africa's Energy Landscape

TotalEnergies has long been a major player in Africa’s energy sector, driving development across both emerging and established markets. The company has a significant footprint in countries such as Namibia, the Republic of Congo, Libya, Mozambique, Uganda, and South Africa. TotalEnergies’ investments span both traditional oil and gas projects as well as renewable energy initiatives, reflecting its commitment to a more diversified energy future for Africa.

In Namibia, for instance, TotalEnergies is advancing its Venus-1 discovery, with plans to produce its first oil by the end of the decade. The company is also heavily involved in the Orange Basin exploration. Meanwhile, in the Republic of Congo, TotalEnergies is investing $600 million to enhance deepwater production at its Moho Nord field.

Beyond oil and gas, the company is expanding its renewable energy portfolio across the continent. This includes significant solar, wind, and hydropower projects, such as the 500 MW Sadada solar project in Libya, a 216 MW solar plant with battery storage in South Africa, and a 1 GW wind and solar project in Morocco designed to produce green ammonia for export.

The Invest in African Energy Forum

The IAE Forum, which TotalEnergies’ Sangster will headline, is an exclusive event aimed at facilitating investment between African energy markets and global investors, including discussions on COVID-19 funding for electricity access mechanisms that emerged, and their relevance to current capital flows. With a focus on fostering partnerships and discussions about the future of energy in Africa, the event will bring together industry experts, project developers, investors, and policymakers for two days of intensive engagement.

The forum will also serve as a crucial platform for sharing perspectives on the role of private investment, as outlined in the IEA investment outlook for Africa's power systems, in Africa’s energy future, strategies for unlocking new upstream opportunities, and the transition to a more sustainable energy system. This makes Sangster's participation, as someone directly involved in both conventional and renewable energy projects across the continent, particularly significant.

TotalEnergies' Diversified Strategy in Africa

Sangster’s keynote address and participation in an exclusive fireside chat will provide an in-depth look into TotalEnergies’ strategy for Africa. His insights will touch upon the company's ongoing projects in the oil and gas sectors, as well as its renewable energy investments. TotalEnergies has committed to making its portfolio more sustainable, underscored by its recent VSB acquisition to expand renewables capabilities, while continuing to be a leader in the energy transition.

One of the company’s notable projects is the Mozambique LNG initiative, a $20 billion venture aimed at supplying liquefied natural gas to international markets. Additionally, TotalEnergies is gearing up for the first oil from its Tilenga field in Uganda, which will be transported through the East African Crude Oil Pipeline (EACOP), the longest heated crude oil pipeline in the world.

In South Africa, TotalEnergies is constructing one of the largest renewable energy projects, a 216 MW solar power plant with integrated battery storage. This project is expected to significantly contribute to the country’s clean energy ambitions. Furthermore, in Morocco, TotalEnergies is developing a major wind and solar facility that will produce green ammonia, aligning with its broader strategy to provide solutions for Europe’s energy needs.

Africa’s Energy Transition

The forum’s timing could not be more critical, given the pressing need for an energy transition in Africa. While the continent remains heavily reliant on fossil fuels for its energy needs, there is growing momentum toward incorporating renewable energy sources, a point reinforced by the IRENA renewables report on decarbonisation and quality of life, which highlights the transformative potential. Africa’s vast natural resources, combined with global investments and partnerships, position the continent as a key player in the global shift toward sustainable energy.

However, Africa faces unique challenges in transitioning to renewable energy, reflecting a broader Sub-Saharan electricity challenge that also presents opportunity, across many markets. These challenges include a lack of infrastructure, financial constraints, and the need for increased political stability in certain regions. The IAE Forum provides an opportunity to address these barriers, with industry leaders like Sangster offering solutions based on real-world experiences and investments.

As the energy sector continues to evolve globally, and even if electricity systems are unlikely to go fully green this decade according to some outlooks, Africa's potential remains vast. The continent’s diverse energy resources, from oil and gas to renewables, offer a unique opportunity to build a more sustainable and resilient energy future. The Invest in African Energy Forum serves as an important platform for global stakeholders to collaborate, learn, and invest in the energy transformation taking place across the continent.

Mike Sangster’s insights at the forum will undoubtedly shape discussions on how companies like TotalEnergies are navigating the intersection of universal electricity access goals, sustainability, and economic growth in Africa. With Africa’s energy needs expected to increase exponentially in the coming decades, ensuring that these needs are met sustainably and equitably will be a priority for both policymakers and private investors.

As the global energy landscape continues to shift, the Invest in African Energy Forum provides a critical space for shaping the future of Africa’s energy sector, offering invaluable opportunities for investment, innovation, and collaboration.

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Hydro-Que9bec COVID-19 M&A Pause signals a halt to international expansion as falling electricity demand, weaker exports, and revenue pressure shift capital to the Quebec economy, prioritizing domestic investment, strategic plan revisions, and risk management.

Key Points

Hydro-Que9bec COVID-19 M&A Pause halts overseas deals, shifting investment to Quebec as demand, exports and revenue fall.

✅ International M&A on hold; capital reallocated to Quebec projects

✅ Lower electricity demand reduces exports and spot prices

✅ Strategic plan and 2020 guidance revised downward

COVID-19 is forcing Hydro-Québec to pull the plug on its global ambitions — for now, even as its electricity ambitions have reopened old wounds in Newfoundland and Labrador in recent years.

Quebec’s state-owned power generator and distributor has put international mergers and acquisitions on hold for the foreseeable future because of the COVID-19 crisis, chief financial officer Jean-Hugues Lafleur said Friday.

Former chief executive officer Éric Martel, who left last month, had made foreign expansion a key tenet of his growth strategy.

“We’re in revision mode” as pertains to acquisitions, Lafleur told reporters on a conference call, as the company pursues a long-term strategy to wean the province off fossil fuels at home as well. “I don’t see how Hydro-Québec could take $5 billion now and invest it in Chile because we have an investment opportunity there. Instead, the $5 billion will be invested here to support the Quebec economy. We’re going to make sure the Quebec economy recovers the right way before we go abroad.”

Lafleur spoke after Hydro-Québec reported a 14-per-cent drop in first-quarter profit and warned full-year results will fall short of expectations as COVID-19 weighs on power demand.

Net income in the three-month period ended March 31 was $1.53 billion, down from $1.77 billion a year ago, Hydro-Québec said in a statement. Revenue fell about six per cent to $4.37 billion.

“Due to the economic downturn resulting from the current crisis, we’re anticipating lower electricity sales in all of our markets,” Lafleur said. “Consequently, the financial outlook for 2020 set out in the strategic plan 2020–2024, which also reflects the province’s no-nuclear stance, will be revised downward.”

It’s still too early to determine the scope of the revision, the company said in its quarterly report. Hydro-Québec was targeting net income of between $2.8 billion and $3 billion in 2020, according to its strategic plan.

The first quarter was the utility’s last under Martel, who quit to take over at jetmaker Bombardier Inc. Quebec appointed former Énergir CEO Sophie Brochu to replace him, effective April 6.

First-quarter results “weren’t significantly affected” by the pandemic, Lafleur said on a conference call with reporters. Electricity sales generated $294 million less than a year ago due primarily to milder temperatures, he said.

Results will start to reflect COVID-19’s impact in the second quarter, though NB Power has signed three deals to bring more Quebec electricity into the province that could cushion some exports.

Electricity consumption in Quebec has fallen five per cent in the past two months, paced by an 11-per-cent plunge for commercial and institutional clients, and cities such as Ottawa saw a demand plunge during closures.

Industrial customers such as pulp and paper producers have also curbed power use, and it’s hard to see demand rebounding this year, Lafleur said.

“What we’ve lost since the start of the pandemic is not coming back,” he said.

Demand on export markets, meanwhile, has shrunk between six per cent and nine per cent since mid-March. The drop has been particularly steep in Ontario, reaching as much as 12 per cent, after the province chose not to renew its electricity deal with Quebec earlier this year, compared with declines of up to five per cent in New England and eight per cent in New York.

Spot prices in the U.S. have retreated in tandem, falling this week to as low as 1.5 U.S. cents per kilowatt-hour, Lafleur said. Hydro-Québec’s hedging strategy — which involves entering into fixed-price sales contracts about a year ahead of time — allowed the company to export power for an average of 4.9 U.S. cents per kilowatt-hour in the first quarter, compared with the 2.2 cents it would have otherwise made.

Investments will decline this year as construction activity proceeds at reduced speed, Lafleur said. Hydro-Québec was initially planning to invest about $4 billion in the province, he said, as it works to increase hydropower capacity to more than 37,000 MW across its fleet.

Physical distancing measures “are having an impact on productivity,” Lafleur said. “We can’t work the way we wanted, and project costs are going to be affected. Anytime we send workers north on a plane, we need to leave an empty seat beside them.”

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China Energy Crisis drives electricity shortages, power cuts, and blackouts as coal prices surge, carbon-neutrality rules tighten, and manufacturing hubs ration energy, disrupting supply chains and industrial output ahead of winter demand peaks.

Key Points

A power shortfall from costly coal, price caps, and emissions targets, causing blackouts and industrial rationing.

✅ Coal prices soar while electricity tariffs are capped

✅ Factories in northeast hubs face rationing and downtime

✅ Supply chains risk delays ahead of winter demand

China is struggling with a severe shortage of electricity which has left millions of homes and businesses hit by power cuts.

Blackouts are not that unusual in the country but this year a number of factors have contributed to a perfect storm for electricity suppliers, including surging electricity demand globally.

The problem is particularly serious in China's north eastern industrial hubs as winter approaches - and is something that could have implications for the rest of the world.

Why has China been hit by power shortages?
The country has in the past struggled to balance electricity supplies with demand, which has often left many of China's provinces at risk of power outages.

During times of peak power consumption in the summer and winter the problem becomes particularly acute.

But this year a number of factors have come together to make the issue especially serious.

As the world starts to reopen after the pandemic, demand for Chinese goods is surging and the factories making them need a lot more power, highlighting China's electricity appetite in recent months.

Rules imposed by Beijing as it attempts to make the country carbon neutral by 2060 have seen coal production slow, even as the country still relies on coal for more than half of its power and as low-emissions generation is set to cover most global demand growth.

And as electricity demand has risen, the price of coal has been pushed up.

But with the government strictly controlling electricity prices, coal-fired power plants are unwilling to operate at a loss, with many drastically reducing their output instead.

Who is being affected by the blackouts?
Homes and businesses have been affected by power cuts as electricity has been rationed in several provinces and regions.

A coal-burning power plant can be seen behind a factory in China"s Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region

The state-run Global Times newspaper said there had been outages in four provinces - Guangdong in the south and Heilongjiang, Jilin and Liaoning in the north east. There are also reports of power cuts in other parts of the country.

Companies in major manufacturing areas have been called on to reduce energy usage during periods of peak demand or limit the number of days that they operate.

Energy-intensive industries such as steel-making, aluminium smelting, cement manufacturing and fertiliser production are among the businesses hardest hit by the outages.

What has the impact been on China's economy?
Official figures have shown that in September 2021, Chinese factory activity shrunk to the lowest it had been since February 2020, when power demand dropped as coronavirus lockdowns crippled the economy.

Concerns over the power cuts have contributed to global investment banks cutting their forecasts for the country's economic growth.

Goldman Sachs has estimated that as much as 44% of the country's industrial activity has been affected by power shortages. It now expects the world's second largest economy to expand by 7.8% this year, down from its previous prediction of 8.2%.

Globally, the outages could affect supply chains, including solar supply chains as the end-of-the-year shopping season approaches.

Since economies have reopened, retailers around the world have already been facing widespread disruption amid a surge in demand for imports.

China's economic planner, the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC), has outlined a number of measures to resolve the problem, with energy supplies in the northeast of the country as its main priority this winter.

The measures include working closely with generating firms to increase output, ensuring full supplies of coal and promoting the rationing of electricity.

The China Electricity Council, which represents generating firms, has also said that coal-fired power companies were now "expanding their procurement channels at any cost" in order to guarantee winter heat and electricity supplies.

However, finding new sources of coal imports may not be straightforward.

Russia is already focused on its customers in Europe, Indonesian output has been hit by heavy rains and nearby Mongolia is facing a shortage of road haulage capacity,

Are energy shortages around the world connected?
Power cuts in China, UK petrol stations running out of fuel, energy bills jumping in Europe, near-blackouts in Japan and soaring crude oil, natural gas and coal prices on wholesale markets - it would be tempting to assume the world is suddenly in the grip of a global energy drought.

However, it is not quite as simple as that - there are some distinctly different issues around the world.

For example, in the UK petrol stations have run dry as motorists rushed to fill up their vehicles over concerns that a shortage of tanker drivers would mean fuel would soon become scarce.

Meanwhile, mainland Europe's rising energy bills and record electricity prices are due to a number of local factors, including low stockpiles of natural gas, weak output from the region's windmills and solar farms and maintenance work that has put generating operations out of action.
 

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