ABB claims its Terra 360 is the "world's fastest electric car charger"

Fifty years ago, a gasoline company’s TV ads showed an aging wooden windmill. As the wind died, it slowed to stillness. The ad asked: “But what do you do when the wind stops?” For the next several decades, fossil fuel providers and big utilities continued to denigrate renewable energy. Even the U.S. Energy Department deemed renewables “too rare, too diffuse, too distant, too uncertain and too ill-timed” to meaningfully contribute, as a top agency analyst put it in 2005.

Today we know that’s not true, especially in British Columbia, Washington and Oregon.

New research shows we could be collectively poised to pioneer a climate-friendly energy future for the globe — that renewable electricity can not only move Cascadia off of fossil fuels, but do so at an affordable price while creating some jobs along the way.

After decades of disinformation, this may sound like a wishful vision. But building a cleaner and more equitable economy — and doing so in just a few decades to head off the worst effects of climate change — is backed by a growing body of regional and international research.

Getting off fossil fuels is “feasible, necessary… and not very expensive” when compared to the earnings of the overall economy, said Jeffrey Sachs, an economist and global development expert at Columbia University.

Much of the confidence about the price tag comes down to this: Innovation and mass production have made wind and solar power installations cheaper than most fossil-fuelled power plants and today’s fastest-growing source of energy worldwide. The key to moving Cascadia’s economies away from fossil fuels, according to the latest research, is building more to make renewable electricity our go-to “fuel.”

However, doing that in time to help head off a cascading climatic crisis by mid-century means the region must take major steps in the next decade to speed the transition, researchers say. And that will require social buy-in.

The new research highlights three mutually supporting strategies that squeeze out fossil fuels:

Chefs and foodies are well-known fans of natural gas. Why, “Cooking with gas” is an expression for a reason. But one trendy Seattle restaurant-bar is getting by just fine with a climate-friendly alternative: electric induction cooktops.

Induction “burners” are just as controllable as gas burners and even faster to heat and cool, but produce less excess heat and zero air pollution. That made a huge difference to chef Stuart Lane’s predecessors when they launched Seattle cocktail bar Artusi 10 years ago.

Using induction meant they could squeeze more tables into the tight space available next door to Cascina Spinasse — their popular Italian restaurant in Seattle’s vibrant Capitol Hill neighborhood — and lowered the cost of expanding.

Rather than igniting a fossil fuel to roast the surface of pots and pans, induction burners generate a magnetic field that heats metal cookware from inside. For people at home, forgoing gas eliminates combustion by-products, which means fewer asthma attacks and other health impacts.

For Artusi, it eliminated the need for a pricey hood and fans to continuously pump fumes and heat out and pull fresh air in. That made induction the cheaper way to go, even though induction cooktops cost more than conventional gas ranges.

Over the years, they’ve expanded the menu because even guests who come for the signature Amari cocktails often stay for the handmade pasta, meatballs and seasonal sauces. So the initial pair of induction burners has multiplied to nine. Yet Artusi retains a cleaner, quieter and more intimate atmosphere. Yet thanks largely to the smaller fans, “it’s not as chaotic,” said Lane.

And Lane adds, it feels good to be cooking on electricity — which in Seattle proper is about 90 per cent renewable — rather than on a fossil fuel that produces climate-warming greenhouse gases. “You feel like you’re doing something right,” he said.

Lane says he wouldn’t be surprised if induction is the new normal for chefs entering the trade 10 years from now. “They probably would cook with gas and say, ‘Damn it’s hot in here!’” — Peter Fairley

This story is supported in part by a grant from the Fund for Investigative Journalism.

increasing energy efficiency to trim the amount of power we need,

boosting renewable energy to make it possible to turn off climate-wrecking fossil-fuel plants, and

plugging as much stuff as possible into the electrical grid.
Recent studies in B.C. and Washington state, and underway for Oregon, point to efficiency and electrification as the most cost-effective route to slashing emissions while maintaining lifestyles and maximizing jobs. A recent National Academies of Science study reached the same conclusion, calling electrification the core strategy for an equitable and economically advantageous energy transition.

However, technologies don’t emerge in a vacuum. The social and economic adjustments required by the wholesale shift from fossil fuels that belch climate-warming carbon emissions to renewable power can still make or break decarbonization, according to Jim Williams, a University of San Francisco energy expert whose simulation software tools have guided many national and regional energy plans, including two new U.S.-wide studies, a December 2020 analysis for Washington state and another in process for Oregon.

Williams points to vital actions that are liable to rile up those who lose money in the deal. Steps like letting trees grow many decades older before they are cut down, so they can suck up more carbon dioxide — which means forgoing quicker profits from selling timber. Or convincing rural communities and conservationists that they should accept power-transmission lines crossing farms and forests.

“It’s those kinds of policy questions and social acceptance questions that are the big challenges,” said Williams.

Washington, Oregon and B.C. already mandate growing supplies of renewable power and help cover the added cost of some electric equipment. These include battery-powered cars, SUVs and pickups on the road. Heat pumps — air conditioners that run in reverse to push heat into a building — can replace furnaces. And, at industrial sites, electric machines can take the place of older mechanical systems, cutting costs and boosting reliability.

As these options drop in price they are weakening reliance on fossil fuels — even among professional chefs who’ve long sworn by cooking with gas (see sidebar: Cooking quick, clean and carbon-free).

“For each of the things that we enjoy and we need, there’s a pathway to do that without producing any greenhouse gas emissions,” said Jotham Peters, managing partner for Vancouver-based energy analysis firm Navius Research, whose clients include the B.C. government.

What the modelling tells us

Key to decarbonization planning for Cascadia are computer simulations of future conditions known as models. These projections take electrification and other options and run with them. Researchers run dozens of simulated potential future energy scenarios for a given region, tinkering with different variables: How much will energy demand grow? What happens if we can get 80 per cent of people into electric cars? What if it’s only 50 per cent? And so on.

Accelerating the transition requires large investments, this modelling shows. Plugging in millions of vehicles and heat pumps demands both brawnier and more flexible power systems, including more power lines and other infrastructure that communities often oppose. That demands both stronger policies and public acceptance. It means training and apprenticeships for the trades that must retrofit homes, and ensuring that all communities benefit — especially those disproportionately suffering from energy-related pollution in the fossil fuel era.

Consensus is imperative, but the new studies are bound to spark controversy. Because, while affordable, decarbonization is not free.

The Meikle Wind Project in BC’s Peace River region, the province’s largest, with 61 turbines producing 184.6 MW of electricity, went online in 2017. Photo: Pattern Development.
Projections for British Columbia and Washington suggest that decarbonizing Cascadia will spur extra job-stimulating growth. But the benefits and relatively low net cost mask a large swing in spending that will create winners and losers, and without policies to protect disadvantaged communities from potential energy cost increases, could leave some behind.

By 2030, the path to decarbonization shows Washingtonians buying about $5 billion less worth of natural gas, coal and petroleum products, while putting even more dollars toward cleaner vehicles and homes. No surprise then that oil and gas interests are attacking the new research.

And the research shows a likely economic speed bump around 2030. Economic growth would slow due to increased energy costs as economies race to make a sharp turn toward pollution reductions after nearly a decade of rising greenhouse gas emissions.

“Meeting that 2030 target is tough and I think it took everybody a little bit by surprise,” said Nancy Hirsh, executive director of the Seattle-based NW Energy Coalition, and co-chair of a state panel that shaped Washington’s recent energy supply planning.

But that’s not cause to ease up. Wait longer, says Hirsh, and the price will only rise.

Charging up

What most drives Cascadia’s energy models toward electrification is the dropping cost of renewable electricity.

Take solar energy. In 2010, no large power system in the world got more than three per cent of its electricity from solar. But over the past decade, solar energy’s cost fell more than 80 per cent, and by last year it was delivering over nine per cent of Germany’s electricity and over 19 per cent of California’s.

Government mandates and incentives helped get the trend started. Once prohibitively expensive, solar’s price now beats nuclear, coal and gas-fired power, and it’s expected to keep getting cheaper. The same goes for wind power, whose jumbo jet-sized composite blades bear no resemblance to the rickety machines once mocked by Big Oil.

In contrast, cleaning up gas- or coal-fired power plants by equipping them to capture their carbon pollution remains expensive even after decades of research and development and government incentives. Cost overruns and mechanical failures recently shuttered the world’s largest “low-carbon” coal-fired power plant in Texas after less than four years of operation.

Retrofits enabled this coal-fired plant in Texas to capture some of its carbon dioxide pollution, which was then injected into aging oil wells to revive production. But problems made the plant’s coal-fired power — which is being priced out by renewable energy — even less competitive and it was shut down after three years in 2020. Photo by NRG Energy.
Innovation and incentives are also making equipment that plugs into the grid cheaper. Electric options are good and getting better with a push from governments and a self-reinforcing cycle of performance improvement, mass production and increased demand.

Battery advances and cost cuts over the past decade have made owning an electric car cheaper, fuel included, than conventional cars. Electric heat pumps may be the next electric wave. They’re three to four times more efficient than electric baseboard heaters, save money over natural gas in most new homes, and work in Cascadia’s coldest zones.

Merran Smith, executive director of the Vancouver-based non-profit Clean Energy Canada, says that — as with electric cars five years ago — people don’t realize how much heat pumps have improved. “Heat pumps used to be big huge noisy things,” said Smith. “Now they’re a fraction of the size, they’re quiet and efficient.”

Electrifying certain industrial processes can also cut greenhouse gases at low cost. Surprisingly, even oil and gas drilling rigs and pipeline compressors can be converted to electric. Provincial utility BC Hydro is building new transmission lines to meet anticipated power demand from electrification of the fracking fields in northeastern British Columbia that supply much of Cascadia’s natural gas.

Simulating low-carbon living

The computer simulation tools guiding energy and climate strategies, unlike previous models that looked at individual sectors, take an economy-wide view. Planners can repeatedly run scenarios through sophisticated software, tinkering with their assumptions each time to answer cross-cutting questions such as: Should the limited supply of waste wood from forestry that can be sustainably removed from forests be burned in power plants? Or is it more valuable converted to biofuel for airplanes that can’t plug into the grid?

Evolved Energy Research, a San Francisco-based firm, analyzed the situation in Washington. Its algorithms are tuned using data about energy production and use today — down to the number and types of furnaces, stovetops or vehicles. It has expert assessments of future costs for equipment and fuels. And it knows the state’s mandated emissions targets.

Researchers run the model myriad times, simulating decisions about equipment and fuel purchases — such as whether restaurants stick with gas or switch to electric induction “burners” as their gas stoves wear out. The model finds the most cost-effective choices by homes and businesses that meet the state’s climate goals.

For Seattle wine bar Artusi, going with electric induction cooktops meant they could squeeze more tables into a tight, comfortable space. Standard burners cost less but would have required noisy, pricey fume hoods and fans to suck out the pollutants. For more, see sidebar. Photo: InvestigateWest.
Rather than accepting that optimal scenario and calling it a day, modellers account for uncertainty in their estimates of future costs by throwing in various additional constraints and rerunning the model.

That probing shows that longer reliance on climate-warming natural gas and petroleum fuels increases costs. In fact, all of the climate-protecting scenarios achieve Washington’s goals at relatively low cost, compared to the state’s historic spending on energy.

The end result of these scenarios are net-zero carbon emissions in 2050, in which a small amount of emissions remaining are offset by rebounding forests or equipment that scrubs CO2 from the air.

But the seeds of that transformation must be sown by 2030. The scenarios identify common strategies that the state can pursue with low risk of future regrets.

One no brainer is to rapidly add wind and solar power to wring out CO2 emissions from Washington’s power sector. The projections end coal-fired power by 2025, as required by law, but also show that, with grid upgrades, gas-fired power plants that produce greenhouse gas emissions can stay turned off most of the time. That delivers about 16.2 million of the 44.8 million metric tons of CO2 emissions cut required by 2030 under state law.

All of the Washington scenarios also jack up electricity consumption to power cars and heating. By 2050, Washington homes and businesses would draw more than twice as much power from the grid as they did last year, meaning climate-friendly electricity is displacing climate-unfriendly gasoline, diesel fuel and natural gas. In the optimal case, electricity meets 98 per cent of transport energy in 2050, and over 80 per cent of building energy use.

By 2050, the high-electrification scenarios would create over 60,000 extra jobs across the state, as replacing old and inefficient equipment and construction of renewable power plants stimulates economic growth, according to projections from Washington, D.C.-based FTI Consulting. Scenarios with less electrification require more low-carbon fuels that cut emissions at higher cost, and thus create 15,000 to 35,000 fewer jobs.

Much of the new employment comes in middle-class positions — including about half of the total in construction — leading to big boosts in employment income. Washingtonians earn over $7 billion more in 2050 under the high-electrification scenarios, compared to a little over $5 billion if buildings stick with gas heating through 2050 and less than $2 billion with extra transportation fuels.

Rocketing to 2030

Evolved Energy’s electrification-heavy decarbonization pathways for Washington dovetail with a growing body of international research, such as that National Academy of Sciences report and a major U.S. decarbonization study led by Princeton University. (See Grist’s 100 per cent Clean Energy video for a popularized view of similar pathways to slash U.S. carbon emissions, informed by Princeton modeller Jesse Jenkins.)

Alberta has seen a massive increase in corporate investment in renewable energy since 2019, and capacity from those deals is set to increase output by two gigawatts —  enough to power roughly 1.5 million homes. 

“Our analysis shows $3.7 billion worth of renewables construction by 2023 and 4,500 jobs,” Nagwan Al-Guneid, the director of Business Renewables Centre Canada, says. 

The centre is an initiative of the environmental think tank Pembina Institute and provides education and guidance for companies looking to invest in renewable energy or energy offsets across Canada. Its membership is made up of renewable energy companies.

The addition of two gigawatts is over two times the amount of renewable energy added to the grid between 2010 and 2017, according to the Canadian Energy Regulator. 

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“This is driven directly by what we call power purchase agreements,” Al-Guneid says. “We have companies from across the country coming to Alberta.”

So far this year, 191 megawatts of renewable energy will be added through purchase agreements, according to the Business Renewables Centre. 

Alberta’s electricity system is unique in Canada — an open market where companies can ink deals directly with private power producers to buy a set amount of electricity produced each year, either for use or for offset credits. The financial security provided by those contracts helps producers build out more renewable projects without market risks. Purchasers get cheap renewable energy or credits to meet internal or external emissions goals. 

It differs from other provinces where there is a monopoly, often government-owned, on power supply. 

In those provinces, investment in renewables largely depends on whether the company with the monopoly is in a buying mood, says Blake Shaffer, an economics professor at the University of Calgary who studies electricity markets. 

That’s not the case in Alberta, where the only real regulatory hurdle is applying to connect a project to the grid.

“Once that’s approved, you can just go ahead and build it, and you can sell it,” Shaffer says.

That sort of flexibility has attracted some big investments, including two deals with Amazon in 2021 to purchase 455 megawatts worth of solar energy from Calgary-based Greengate Power. There are also big investments from oil companies looking to offset emissions.

The investments are allowing Alberta to decarbonize its grid, largely with the backing of the private sector. 

Shaffer says Alberta is the “renewables capital in Canada.”

“That just shocks people because of course their association with Alberta is nothing about renewables, but oil and gas,” Shaffer says. “But it really is the investment centre for renewables in the entire country right now.”

Alberta has ‘embarrassing’ riches in wind energy and solar power
It’s not just the market that is driving Alberta’s renewables boom. According to Shaffer there are three other key factors: an embarrassment of wind and solar riches, the need to transition away from a traditionally dirty, coal-reliant grid and the current high costs of energy. 

Shaffer says the strong and seemingly non-stop winds coming off the foothills of the Rockies in the southwest of the province mean each turbine produces more energy compared to other areas. The same is true for solar, with an abundance of sunny days.

“Southern Alberta and southern Saskatchewan have the best solar insolation,” he says. “You put a panel in Vancouver, or you put a panel in Medicine Hat, and you’re gonna get about 50 per cent more energy out of that panel in Medicine Hat, and they’re gonna cost you the same.”

The spark that set off the surge in investments wasn’t strictly an open-market mechanism. Under the previous NDP government, the province brought in a program that allowed private producers to compete for government contracts.

The government agreed to a certain price and the producers were then allowed to sell their electricity on the open market. If the price dropped below what was guaranteed, the province would pay the difference. If, however, the price was higher, the developers would pay the difference to the government. 

California Governor Gavin Newsom has signed a new legislation requiring that from 2035, all newly ordered or contracted school buses must be zero-emission.

The state estimates that switching to electric school buses will cost around five billion dollars over the next decade. That is because a diesel equivalent costs about 200,000 dollars less than a battery-electric version. And “the California Constitution requires the state to reimburse local agencies and school districts for certain costs mandated by the state.”

There are about 23,800 school buses on the road in California. About 500 are already electric, and 2,078 electric buses have been ordered.

There are – as always- exceptions to the rule. So-called “frontier districts,” which have less than 600 students or are in a county with a population density of less than ten persons per square mile, can file for a five-year extension. However, they must “reasonably demonstrate that a daily planned bus route for transporting pupils to and from school cannot be serviced through available zero-emission technology in 2035.”

Califonia is the fifth US state to mandate electric school buses. Connecticut, Maryland, Maine, and New York implemented similar legislation.

The Ontario government is establishing a Hydrogen Innovation Fund that will invest $15 million over the next three years to kickstart and develop opportunities for hydrogen to be integrated into Ontario’s clean electricity system, including hydrogen electricity storage. This launch marks another milestone in the implementation of the province’s Low-Carbon Hydrogen Strategy, positioning Ontario as a clean manufacturing hub.

“When energy is reliable, affordable and clean our whole province wins,” said Todd Smith, Minister of Energy. “The Hydrogen Innovation Fund will help to lay the groundwork for hydrogen to contribute to our diverse energy supply, supporting game-changing investments in electric vehicle production, green steelmaking and clean manufacturing that will create good paying jobs, grow our economy and reduce emissions.”

Hydrogen Innovation Fund projects would support electricity supply, capacity, storage and demand management, and support growth in Ontario’s hydrogen economy. The Fund will support projects across three streams:

Existing facilities already built or operational and ready to evaluate how hydrogen can support Ontario’s clean grid.
New hydrogen facilities not yet constructed but could be in-service by a specified date to demonstrate how hydrogen can support Ontario’s clean grid.
Research studies investigating the feasibility of novel applications of hydrogen or support future hydrogen project decision making.

The Hydrogen Innovation Fund will be administered by the Independent Electricity System Operator, which is opening applications for the fund in April 2023. Natural Resources Canada modelling shows that hydrogen could make up about 30 per cent of the country's fuels and feedstock by 2050 and create 100,000 jobs in Ontario. By making investments early to explore applications for hydrogen in our clean electricity sector we are paving the way for the growth of our own hydrogen economy.

“As a fuel that can be produced and used with little to no greenhouse gas emissions, hydrogen has tremendous potential to help us meet our long-term economic and environmental goals,” said David Piccini, Minister of the Environment, Conservation and Parks. “Our government will continue to support innovation and investment in clean technologies that will position Ontario as the clean manufacturing and transportation hub of the future while leading Canada in greenhouse gas emission reductions.”

The province is also advancing work to develop the Niagara Hydrogen Centre, led by Atura Power, which would increase the amount of low-carbon hydrogen produced in Ontario by eight-fold. This innovative project would help balance the electricity grid while using previously unutilized water at the Sir Adam Beck generating station to produce electricity for a hydrogen electrolyzer. To support the implementation of the project, the IESO entered into a contract for grid regulation services at the Sir Adam Beck station starting in 2024, which will support low-carbon hydrogen production at the Niagara Hydrogen Centre.

These investments build on Ontario’s clean energy advantage as our government makes progress on the Low-Carbon Hydrogen Strategy that laid out eight concrete actions to make Ontario a leader in the latest frontier of energy innovation – the hydrogen economy.

Plug-in electric cars are gradually increasing their market share in the US (reaching about 4% in 2021), which starts to make an impact.

The Department of Energy (DOE)’s Vehicle Technologies Office highlights in its latest weekly report that in 2021, plug-ins traveled some 19.1 billion miles (31 billion km) on electricity - all miles traveled in BEVs and the EV mode portion of miles traveled in PHEVs.

This estimated distance of 19 billion miles is noticeably higher than in 2020 (nearly 13 billion miles), which indicates how quickly the electrification of driving progresses. BEVs noted a 57% year-over-year increase in EV miles, while PHEVs by 24% last year (mostly proportionally to sales increase).

According to Argonne National Laboratory's Assessment of Light-Duty Plug-in Electric Vehicles in the United States, 2010–2021, the cumulative distance covered by plug-in electric cars in the US (through December 2021) amounted to 68 billion miles (109 billion miles).

U.S. Department of Transportation, Federal Highway Administration, December 2021 Traffic Volume Trends, 2022.

The report estimates that over 2.1 million plug-in electric cars have been sold in the US through December 2021 (about 1.3 million all-electric and 0.8 million plug-in hybrids), equipped with a total of more than 110 GWh of batteries.

It's also estimated that 19.1 billion electric miles traveled in 2021 reduced the national gasoline consumption by 700 million gallons of gasoline or 0.54%.

On the other hand, plug-ins consumed some 6.1 terawatt-hours of electricity (6.1 TWh is 6,100 GWh), which sounds like almost 320 Wh/mile (200 Wh/km).

The difference between the fuel cost and energy cost in 2021 is estimated at $1.3 billion.

Cumulatively, 68 billion electric miles since 2010 is worth about 2.5 billion gallons of gasoline. So, the cumulative savings already is several billion dollars.

Those are pretty amazing numbers and let's just imagine that electric cars are just starting to sell in high volume. Every year those numbers will be improving, thus tremendously changing the world that we know today.

Grid-eMotion Fleet smart charging solution to help the City of Berlin reach its goal of a zero-emission bus fleet by 2030

Dubai, UAE: Hitachi Energy has won an order from Berliner Verkehrsbe-triebe (BVG), Germany’s biggest municipal public transportation company, to supply its Grid-eMotionTM Fleet smart charging infrastructure to help BVG transition to sustainable mobility in Berlin, the country’s capital.

Hitachi Energy will provide a complete Grid-eMotion Fleet grid-to-plug charging infrastructure solution for the next two bus depots to be converted in the bus electrification program. Hitachi Energy’s solution offers the smallest footprint for both the connection, as well as low noise emissions and high reliability – three key requirements for bus depots in a densely populated urban environment, where space is limited and flawless charging is vital to ensure buses run on time.

The solution comprises a connection to the distribution grid, power distribution and DC charging infrastructure with charging points and smart charging systems. Hitachi Energy will perform the engineering and integrate, install and service the entire solution. The solution has a compact and robust design that requires less equipment than competing infrastructure, which results in a small footprint, lower operating and maintenance costs, and higher reliability. Typically, Grid-eMotion Fleet requires 60 percent less space and 40 percent less cabling than alternative charging systems; it also provides superior overall system reliability.

“We are delighted to help the City of Berlin in its transition to quiet and emission-free transportation and a sustainable energy future for the people of this iconic capital,” said Niklas Persson, Managing Director of Hitachi Energy’s Grid Integration business. “We feel the urgency and have the pioneering technology and commitment to advance sustainable mobility, thus improving the quality of life of millions of people.”

BVG operates Germany’s biggest city bus fleet of around 1,500 vehicles, which it aims to make completely electric and emission-free by 2030. This requires the installation of charging infra-structure in its large network of bus depots.

About Grid-eMotion:

Grid-eMotion comprises two unique, innovative solutions – Fleet and Flash. Grid-eMotion Fleet is a grid-code compliant and space-saving grid-to-plug charging solution that can be in-stalled in new and existing bus depots. The charging solution can be scaled flexibly as the fleet gets bigger and greener. It includes a robust and compact grid connection and charging points, and is also available for commercial vehicle fleets, including last-mile delivery and heavy-duty trucks that require high power charging of several megawatts. Grid-eMotionTM Flash enables operators to flash-charge buses within seconds at passenger stops and fully recharge within minutes at the route terminus, without interrupting the bus schedule.

Both solutions are equipped with configurable smart charging digital platforms that can be em-bedded with larger fleet and energy management systems. Additional offerings from Hitachi Energy for EV charging systems consist of e-meshTM energy management and optimization solutions and Lumada APM, EAM and FSM solutions, to help transportation operators make informed decisions that maximize their uptime and improve efficiency.

In the past few months alone, Hitachi Energy has won orders from customers and partners all over the world for its smart charging portfolio – a sign that Grid-eMotion is changing the e-mobility landscape for electric buses and commercial vehicles. Grid-eMotion solutions are al-ready operating or under development in Australia, Canada, China, India, the Middle East, the United States and several countries in Europe.