Hydropower to reach 380 GW in 2020

DOE Environmental Management Funding Boost seeks $7.25B to accelerate nuclear cleanup, upgrade Savannah River Site infrastructure, create jobs, and support small businesses, echoing ARRA 2009 results and expediting DOE EM waste remediation nationwide.

Key Points

A proposed $7.25B stimulus for DOE's EM to accelerate nuclear cleanup, modernize infrastructure, and create jobs.

✅ $7.25B one-time stimulus for DOE EM cleanup and infrastructure.

✅ Targets Savannah River Site; supports jobs and small businesses.

✅ Builds on ARRA 2009; accelerates nuclear waste remediation.

A bloc of local governments and nuclear industry, nuclear innovation efforts, labor and community groups are pressing Congress to provide a one-time multibillion-dollar boost to the U.S. Department of Energy Office of Environmental Management, the remediation-focused Savannah River Site landlord.

The organizations and officials -- including Citizens For Nuclear Technology Awareness Executive Director Jim Marra and Savannah River Site Community Reuse Organization President and CEO Rick McLeod -- sent a letter Friday to U.S. House and Senate leadership "strongly" supporting a $7.25 billion funding injection, even as ACORE challenges coal and nuclear subsidies in separate regulatory proceedings, arguing it "will help reignite the national economy," help revive small businesses and create thousands of new jobs despite the novel coronavirus crisis.

More than 30 million Americans have filed unemployment claims in the past two months, with additional clean energy job losses reported, too. Hundreds of thousands of claims have been filed in South Carolina since mid-March, compounding issues like unpaid utility bills in neighboring states.

The requested money could, too, speed Environmental Management's nuclear waste cleanup missions and be used to fix ailing infrastructure and strengthen energy security for rural communities nationwide -- some of which dates back to the Cold War -- at sites across the country. That's a "rare" opportunity, reads the letter, which prominently features the Energy Communities Alliance logo and its chairman's signature.

Similar funding programs, like what was done with the 2009 American Recovery and Reinvestment Act and recent clean energy funding initiatives, have been successful.

At the time, amid a staggering economic downturn nationwide, Environmental Management contractors "hired over 20,000 new workers," putting them "to work to reduce the overall cleanup complex footprint by 688 square miles while strengthening local economies," the Friday letter reads.

The Energy Department's cleanup office estimates the $6 billion investment years ago reduced its environmental liability by $13 billion, according to a 2012 report.

Such a leap forward, the coalition believes, is repeatable, a view reflected in current plans to revitalize coal communities with clean energy projects across the country.

"We are confident that DOE can successfully manage increased funding and leverage it for future economic development as it has in the past," the letter states. It continues: "We take pride in working together to support jobs and development of infrastructure and work that make our country stronger and assists us to recover from the impacts of COVID-19."

As of Monday afternoon, 8,942 cases of COVID-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus, have been logged in South Carolina. Aiken County is home to 155 of those cases.

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Ontario Global Adjustment Supreme Court Appeal spotlights a constitutional challenge to Ontario's electricity charge, pitting National Steel Car against the IESO over regulatory charge vs tax, procurement policy, and renewable energy feed-in tariff contracts.

Key Points

An SCC leave bid on whether Ontario's global adjustment is a valid regulatory charge or an unconstitutional tax.

✅ Appeals Court revived case for full record review

✅ Dispute centers on regulatory charge vs tax classification

✅ FIT renewables contracts and procurement policies at issue

The Ontario government wants the Supreme Court of Canada to weigh in on a constitutional challenge being brought against a large provincial electricity charge, a case the province claims raises issues of national importance.

Ontario’s attorney general and its Independent Electricity System Operator applied for permission to appeal to the Supreme Court in January, according to the court’s website.

The province is trying to appeal a Court of Appeal decision reinstating the challenge from November that said a legal challenge by Hamilton, Ont.-based National Steel Car Ltd. should be sent back to a lower-court for a full hearing.

Court reinstates constitutional challenge to Ontario's hefty ‘global adjustment’ electricity charge
National Steel Car appealing decision in legal challenge of Ontario electricity fee it calls an unconstitutional tax
Doug Ford’s cancellation of green energy deals costs Ontario taxpayers $231 million
National Steel Car launched its legal challenge in 2017, with the maker of steel rail cars claiming the province’s global adjustment electricity charge was a tax intended to fund certain post-financial-crisis policy goals. Since it is allegedly a tax, and one not imposed by the provincial legislature, the company’s argument is the global adjustment is unconstitutional, and also in breach of a provincial law requiring a referendum for new taxes.

The global adjustment mostly bridges the gap between the province’s hourly electricity price and the price guaranteed under contracts and regulated rates with power generators. It also helps cover the cost of building new electricity infrastructure and providing conservation programs, but the fee now makes up most of the commodity portion of a household power bill in the province.

Ontario argued the global adjustment is a valid regulatory charge, and moved to have National Steel Car’s challenge thrown out. An Ontario Superior Court judge agreed, and dismissed the challenge in 2018, saying it was “plain, obvious and beyond doubt” it could not succeed. However, an appeals court judge disagreed, writing in a decision last November that the “merits should not have been determined on a pleadings motion and without the development of a full record.”

In filings made to the Supreme Court, both the IESO and Ontario’s Ministry of the Attorney General argued their proposed appeals raise “issues of national and public importance,” such as whether incorporating environmental and social policy goals in procurement could turn attempts by a public body to recover costs into an unconstitutional tax.

Most applications for leave to appeal to the Supreme Court are dismissed, but the Ontario government claims the court’s guidance is required in this case, as it could lead to questions being raised about other fees or charges, such as money raised from fishing licences.

“A failure to dispose of this claim at the pleadings stage may well result in such uncertainty that public authorities across Canada decline to incorporate the kind of environmental and social policy goals objected to in this case into the decisions they make about how to spend funds raised from regulatory charges,” the filing from the attorney general states. “Alternatively, it may induce governments not to engage in cost recovery in connection with publicly supplied goods and services, which can otherwise be sound public policy.”

The government has so far had to pay National Steel Car $250,000 in legal costs “to avoid responding to the credible claim that the Global Adjustment is an unconstitutional tax,” said David Trafford of Morse Shannon LLP, one of National Steel Car’s lawyers.

“The application for leave to appeal is the next step in this effort to avoid having to respond to the case on the merits,” Trafford added in an email.

The application for leave to appeal is the next step in this effort to avoid having to respond to the case on the merits

David Trafford of Morse Shannon, one of National Steel Car’s lawyers
 
National Steel Car has particularly taken issue with the part of the global adjustment that funded contracts for renewable energy under a “feed-in tariff” program, or FIT, which the company called “the main culprit behind the dramatic price increases for electricity.”

The FIT program has been ended, but contracts awarded under it remain in place and form part of the global adjustment. Ontario’s auditor general estimated in 2015 that electricity consumers would pay $9.2 billion more for renewable energy under the government’s guaranteed-price program, a figure that later featured in a dispute between the auditor and the electricity regulator that drew political attention.

National Steel Car said its global adjustment costs grew from $207,260 in 2008 to almost $3.4 million in 2016, reflecting how high electricity rates have pressured manufacturers, to almost $3.4 million in 2016. For 2018, there was approximately $11.2 billion in global adjustment collected, according to the IESO’s reporting.

A spokesperson for the IESO said it “is not in a position to comment” because the case is still before the courts.

Electricity prices have been an ongoing problem for both Ontario consumers and politicians, which the previous Liberal government tried to address in 2017 by, among other things, refinancing global-adjustment costs through the Fair Hydro Plan and other measures.

Since National Steel Car filed its lawsuits, though, the Liberals lost power in the province and were succeeded in 2018 by Premier Doug Ford and the Progressive Conservatives, who made changes to the previous government’s power policies, including legislation to lower electricity rates introduced early in their mandate.

The province has also pursued interprovincial power arrangements, including building on an electricity deal with Quebec as part of its broader energy strategy.

“The present government of Ontario does not agree with the former government’s electricity procurement program, which ceased awarding new contracts in 2016,” Ontario’s attorney general said in a filing. “However, Ontario submits that (the lower-court judge) was correct in holding that it does not give rise to a claim susceptible to being remedied by the courts.”

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Floating Rotating Eco Hotel harnesses renewable energy via VAWTAU, recycles rainwater for greywater, and follows zero-waste principles. This mobile, off-grid, Qatar-based resort generates electricity by slow 360-degree rotation while offering luxury amenities.

Key Points

A mobile, off-grid hotel that rotates to generate power, uses VAWTAU, recycles greywater, and targets zero-waste.

✅ Rotates 360 deg in 24 hours to produce electricity

✅ VAWTAU system: vertical-axis turbine and sun umbrella

✅ Rain capture and greywater recycling minimize waste

A new eco-friendly, floating hotel plans to generate its own electricity by rotating while guests relax on board, echoing developments like the solar Marriott hotel in sustainable hospitality.

Led by Hayri Atak Architectural Design Studio (HAADS), the structure will be completely mobile, meaning it can float from place to place, never sitting in a permanent position. Building began in March 2020 and the architects aim for it to be up and running by 2025.

It will be based in Qatar, but has the potential to be located in different areas due to its mobility, and it sits within a region advancing projects such as solar hydrogen production that signal a broader clean-energy shift.

The design includes minimum energy loss and a zero waste principle at its core, aligning with progress in wave energy research that aims to power a clean future. As it will rotate around all day long, this will generate electrical energy to power the whole hotel.

But guests won’t feel too dizzy, as it takes 24 hours for the hotel to spin 360 degrees.

The floating hotel will stay within areas with continuous currents, to ensure that it is always rotating, drawing on ideas from ocean and river power systems that exploit natural flows. This type of green energy production is called ‘vawtau’ (vertical axis wind turbine and umbrella) which works like a wind turbine on the vertical axis, while alternative approaches like kite-based wind energy target stronger, high-altitude currents as well, and functions as a sun umbrella on the coastal band.

Beyond marine-current concepts such as underwater kites, the structure will also make use of rainwater to create power. A cover on the top of the hotel will collect rain to be used for greywater recycling. This is when wastewater is plumbed straight back into toilets, washing machines or outside taps to maximise efficiency.

The whole surface area is around 35,000 m², comparable in scale to emerging floating solar plants that demonstrate modular, water-based infrastructure, and there are a total of 152 rooms. It will have three different entrances so that there is access to the land at any time of the day, thanks to the 140-degree pier that surrounds it.

There will also be indoor and outdoor swimming pools, a sauna, spa, gym, mini golf course and other activity areas.

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California Heat Wave Grid Emergency sees CAISO issue Stage 3 alerts as record demand, extreme heat, and climate change strain renewable energy; conservation efforts avert rolling blackouts and protect grid reliability statewide.

Key Points

A grid emergency in California's heat wave, with CAISO Stage 3 alerts amid record demand and risk of rolling blackouts.

✅ CAISO triggered Stage 3 alerts, then downgraded by 8 pm PT

✅ Record 52,061 MW demand; conservation reduced grid stress

✅ Extreme heat and climate change heightened outage risks

California has avoided ordering rolling blackouts after electricity demand reached a record-high Tuesday night from excessive heat across the state, even as energy experts warn the U.S. grid faces mounting climate stresses. 

The California Independent System Operator, which oversees the state’s electrical grid, imposed its highest level energy emergency on Tuesday, a step that comes before ordering rolling blackouts and allows the state to access emergency power sources.

The Office of Emergency Services also sent a text alert to residents requesting them to conserve power. The operator downgraded the Stage 3 alert around 8:00 p.m. PT on Tuesday and said that “consumer conservation played a big part in protecting electric grid reliability,” and in bolstering grid resilience overall.

The state capital of Sacramento reached 116 degrees Fahrenheit on Tuesday, according to the National Weather Service, surpassing a record that was set almost 100 years ago. And nearly a half-dozen cities in the San Francisco Bay Area tied or set all-time highs, the agency said.

CAISO said peak power demand on Tuesday reached 52,061 megawatts, surpassing a previous high of 50,270 megawatts on July 24, 2006, while nearby B.C. electricity demand has also hit records during extreme weather.

While the operator did not order rolling blackouts, three Northern California cities saw brief power outages, and severe storms have caused similar disruptions statewide in recent months. As of 7:00 am PT on Wednesday, nearly 8,000 customers in California were without power, according to PowerOutage.us. 

Gov. Gavin Newsom, in a Twitter video on Tuesday, warned the temperatures across California were unprecedented and the state is headed into the worst part of the heat wave, which is on track to be the hottest and longest on record for September.

“The risk for outages is real and it’s immediate,” Newsom said. “These triple-digit temperatures throughout much of the state are leading, not surprisingly, to record demand on the energy grid.”

The governor urged residents to pre-cool their homes earlier in the day when more power is available and turn thermostats to 78 degrees or higher after 4:00 pm PT. “Everyone has to do their part to help step up for just a few more days,” Newsom said.

The possibility for widespread outages reflects how power grids in California and other states are becoming more vulnerable to climate-related disasters such as heat waves, storms and wildfires across California.

California, which has set a goal to transition to 100% carbon-free electricity by 2045, has shuttered a slew of gas power plants in the past few years, leaving the state increasingly dependent on solar energy.

At times, the state has produced a clean energy surplus during peak solar generation, underscoring the challenges of balancing supply and demand.

The megadrought in the American West has generated the driest two decades in the region in at least 1,200 years, and human-caused climate change has fueled the problem, scientists said earlier this year. Conditions will likely continue through 2022 and persist for years.

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Enegix Base One Green Hydrogen Plant will produce renewable hydrogen via electrolysis in Ceara, Brazil, leveraging 3.4 GW baseload renewables, offshore wind, and hydro to scale clean energy, storage, and export logistics.

Key Points

A $5.4bn Ceara, Brazil project to produce 600m kg of green hydrogen annually using 3.4 GW of baseload renewables.

✅ 3.4 GW baseload from hydro and offshore wind pipelines

✅ Targets 600m kg green hydrogen per year via electrolysis

✅ Focus on storage, transport, and export supply chains

In March, Enegix Energy announced some of the most ambitious hydrogen plans the world has ever seen. The company signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with the government of the Brazilian state of Ceará to build the world’s largest green hydrogen plant in the state on the country’s north-eastern coast, and the figures are staggering.

The Base One facility will produce more than 600 million kilograms of green hydrogen annually from 3.4GW of baseload renewable energy, and receive $5.4bn in investment to get the project off the ground and producing within four years.

Green hydrogen, hydrogen produced by electrolysis that is powered by renewables, has significant potential as a clean energy source. Already seeing increased usage in the transport sector, the power source boasts the energy efficiency and the environmental viability to be a cornerstone of the world’s energy mix.

Yet practical challenges have often derailed large-scale green hydrogen projects, from the inherent obstacle of requiring separate renewable power facilities to the logistical and technological challenges of storing and transporting hydrogen. Could vast investment, clever planning, and supportive governments and programs like the DOE’s hydrogen hubs initiative help Enegix to deliver on green hydrogen’s oft-touted potential?

Brazilian billions
The Base One project is exceptional not only for its huge scale, but the timing of its construction, with demand for hydrogen set to increase dramatically over the next few decades. Figures from Wood Mackenzie suggest that hydrogen could account for 1.4 billion tonnes of energy demand by 2050, one-tenth of the world’s supply, with green hydrogen set to be the majority of this figure.

Yet considering that, prior to the announcement of the Enegix project, global green hydrogen capacity was just 94MW, advances in offshore green hydrogen and the development of a project of this size and scope could scale up the role of green hydrogen by orders of magnitude.

“We really need to [advance clean energy] without any emissions on a completely clean, carbon neutral and net-zero framework, and so we needed access to a large amount of green energy projects,” explains Wesley Cooke, founder and CEO of Enegix, a goal aligned with analyses that zero-emissions electricity by 2035 is possible, discussing the motivation behind the vast project.

With these ambitious goals in mind, the company needed to find a region with a particular combination of political will and environmental traits to enable such a project to take off.

“When we looked at all of these key things: pipeline for renewables, access to water, cost of renewables, and appetite for renewables, Brazil really stood out to us,” Cooke continues. “The state of Ceará, that we’ve got an MOU with the government in at the moment, ticks all of these boxes.”

Ceará’s own clean energy plans align with Enegix’s, at least in terms of their ambition and desire for short-term development. Last October, the state announced that it plans to add 5GW of new offshore wind capacity in the next five years. With BI Energia alone providing $2.5bn in investment for its 1.2GW Camocim wind facility, there is significant financial muscle behind these lofty ambitions.

“One thing I should add is that Brazil is very blessed when it comes to baseload renewables,” says Cooke. “They have an incredibly high percentage of their country-wide energy that comes from renewable sources and a lot of this is in part due to the vast hydro schemes that they have for hydro dams. Not a lot of countries have that, and specifically when you’re trying to produce hydrogen, having access to vast amounts of renewables [is vital].”

Changing perceptions and tackling challenges
This combination of vast investment and integration with the existing renewable power infrastructure of Ceará could have cultural impacts too. The combination of state support for and private investment in clean energy offsets many of the narratives emerging from Brazil concerning its energy policies and environmental protections, even as debates over clean energy's trade-offs persist in Brazil and beyond, from the infamous Brumadinho disaster to widespread allegations of illegal deforestation and gold mining.

“I can’t speak for the whole of Brazil, but if we look at Ceará specifically, and even from what we’ve seen from a federal government standpoint, they have been talking about a hydrogen roadmap for Brazil for quite some time now,” says Cooke, highlighting the state’s long-standing support for green hydrogen. “I think we came in at the perfect time with a very solid plan for what we wanted to do, [and] we’ve had nothing but great cooperation, and even further than just cooperation, excitement around the MOU.”

This narrative shift could help overcome one of the key challenges facing many hydrogen projects, the idea that its practical difficulties render it fundamentally unsuitable for baseload power generation. By establishing a large-scale green hydrogen facility in a country that has recently struggled to present itself as one that is invested in renewables, the Base One facility could be the ultimate proof that such clean hydrogen projects are viable.

Nevertheless, practical challenges remain, as is the case with any energy project of this scale. Cooke mentions a number of solutions to two of the obstacles facing hydrogen production around the world: renewable energy storage and transportation of the material.

“We were looking at compressed hydrogen via specialised tankers [and] we were looking at liquefied hydrogen, [as] you have to get liquefied hydrogen very cool to around -253°, and you can use 30% to 40% of your total energy that you started with just to get it down to that temperature,” Cooke explains.

“The other aspect is that if you’re transporting this internationally, you really have to think about the supply chain. If you land in a country like Indonesia, that’s wonderful, but how do you get it from Indonesia to the customers that need it? What is the supply chain? What does that look like? Does it exist today?”

The future of green hydrogen
These practical challenges present something of a chicken and egg problem for the future of green hydrogen: considerable up-front investment is required for functions such as storage and transport, but the difficulties of these functions can scare off investors and make such investments uncommon.

Yet with the world’s environmental situation increasingly dire, more dramatic, and indeed risky, moves are needed to alter its energy mix, and Enegix is one company taking responsibility and accepting these risks.

“We need to have the renewables to match the dirty fuel types,” Cooke says. “This [investment] will really come from the decisions that are being made right now by large-scale companies, multi-billion-euro-per-year revenue companies, committing to building out large scale factories in Europe and Asia, to support PEM [hydrolysis].”

This idea of large-scale green hydrogen is also highly ambitious, considering the current state of the energy source. The International Renewable Energy Agency reports that around 95% of hydrogen comes from fossil fuels, so hydrogen has a long ways to go to clean up its own carbon footprint before going on to displace fossil fuel-driven industries.

Yet this displacement is exactly what Enegix is targeting. Cooke notes that the ultimate goal of Enegix is not simply to increase hydrogen production for use in a single industry, such as clean vehicles. Instead, the idea is to develop green hydrogen infrastructure to the point where it can replace coal and oil as a source of baseload power, leapfrogging other renewables to form the bedrock of the world’s future energy mix.

“The problem with [renewable] baseload is that they’re intermittent; the wind’s not always blowing and the sun’s not always shining and batteries are still very expensive, although that is changing. When you put those projects together and look at the levelised cost of energy, this creates a chasm, really, for baseload.

“And for us, this is really where we believe that hydrogen needs to be thought of in more detail and this is what we’re really evangelising about at the moment.”

A more hydrogen-reliant energy mix could also bring social benefits, with Cooke suggesting that the same traits that make hydrogen unwieldy in countries with established energy infrastructures could make hydrogen more practically viable in other parts of the world.

“When you look at emerging markets and developing markets at the moment, the power infrastructure in some cases can be quite messy,” Cooke says. “You’ve got the potential for either paying for the power or extending your transmission grid, but rarely being able to do both of those.

“I think being able to do that last mile piece, utilising liquid organic hydrogen carrier as an energy vector that’s very cost-effective, very scalable, non-toxic, and non-flammable; [you can] get that power where you need it.

“We believe hydrogen has the potential to be very cost-effective at scale, supporting a vision of cheap, abundant electricity over time, but also very modular and usable in many different use cases.”

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Alberta Coal Community Transition Fund backs renewables, natural gas, and economic diversification, offering grants, workforce retraining, and community development to municipalities and First Nations as Alberta phases out coal-fired power by 2030.

Key Points

A provincial grant helping coal-impacted communities diversify, retrain workers, and transition to renewables by 2030.

✅ Grants for municipalities and First Nations

✅ Supports diversification and job retraining

✅ Focus on renewables, natural gas, and new sectors

The Coal Community Transition Fund is open to municipalities and First Nations affected as Alberta phases out coal-fired electricity by 2030 under the federal coal plan to focus on renewables and natural gas.

Economic Development Minister Deron Bilous says the government wants to ensure these communities thrive through the transition, aligning with views that fossil-fuel workers support the energy transition across the economy.

“Residents in our communities have concerns about the transition away from coal, even as discussions about phasing out fossil fuels in B.C. unfold nationally,” Rod Shaigec, mayor of Parkland County, said.

“They also have ideas on how we can mitigate the impacts on workers and diversify our economy, including clean energy partnerships to create new employment opportunities for affected workers. We are working to address those concerns and support their ideas. This funding means we can make those ideas a reality in various economic sectors of opportunity.”

The coal-mining town of Hanna, northeast of Calgary, has already received $450,000 through the program to work on economic diversification, exploring options like bridging the Alberta-B.C. electricity gap that could support new industries.

The application deadline for the coal transition fund is the end of November.

A provincial advisory panel is also expected to report back this fall on ways to create new jobs and retrain workers during the coal phase-out.

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