Feds announce $500M contract with Edmonton company for green electricity

Electric Car Motors convert electricity to torque via rotor-stator magnetic fields, using AC/DC inverters, permanent magnets or induction designs; they power EV powertrains efficiently and enable regenerative braking for energy recovery and control.

Key Points

Electric car motors turn electrical energy into wheel torque using rotor-stator fields, inverters, and AC or DC control.

✅ AC induction, PMSM, BLDC, and reluctance architectures explained

✅ Inverters manage AC/DC, voltage, and motor speed via frequency

✅ Regenerative braking recovers energy and reduces wear

When was the last time you stopped to think about how electric cars actually work, especially if you're wondering whether to buy an electric car today? We superfans of the car biz have mostly developed a reasonable understanding of how combustion powertrains work. Most of us can visualize fuel and air entering a combustion chamber, exploding, pushing a piston down, and rotating a crankshaft that ultimately turns the wheels. We generally understand the differences between inline, flat, vee-shaped, and maybe even Wankel rotary combustion engines.

Mechanical engineering concepts such as these are comparatively easy to comprehend. But it's probably a fair bet to wager that only a minority of folks reading this can explain on a bar napkin exactly how invisible electrons turn a car's wheels or how a permanent-magnet motor differs from an AC induction one. Electrical engineering can seem like black magic and witchcraft to car nuts, so it's time to demystify this bold new world of electromobility, with the age of electric cars arriving ahead of schedule.

How Electric Cars Work: Motors
It has to do with magnetism and the natural interplay between electric fields and magnetic fields. When an electrical circuit closes allowing electrons to move along a wire, those moving electrons generate an electromagnetic field complete with a north and a south pole. When this happens in the presence of another magnetic field—either from a different batch of speeding electrons or from Wile E. Coyote's giant ACME horseshoe magnet, those opposite poles attract, and like poles repel each other.

Electric motors work by mounting one set of magnets or electromagnets to a shaft and another set to a housing surrounding that shaft. By periodically reversing the polarity (swapping the north and south poles) of one set of electromagnets, the motor leverages these attracting and repelling forces to rotate the shaft, thereby converting electricity into torque and ultimately turning the wheels, in a sector where the electric motor market is growing rapidly worldwide. Conversely—as in the case of regenerative braking—these magnetic/electromagnetic forces can transform motion back into electricity.

How Electric Cars Work: AC Or DC?
The electricity supplied to your home arrives as alternating current (AC), and bidirectional charging means EVs can power homes for days as needed, so-called because the north/south or plus/minus polarity of the power changes (alternates) 60 times per second. (That is, in the United States and other countries operating at 110 volts; countries with a 220-volt standard typically use 50-Hz AC.) Direct current (DC) is what goes into and comes out of the + and - poles of every battery. As noted above, motors require alternating current to spin. Without it, the electromagnetic force would simply lock their north and south poles together. It's the cycle of continually switching north and south that keeps a motor spinning.

Today's electric cars are designed to manage both AC and DC energy on board. The battery stores and dispenses DC current, but again, the motor needs AC. When recharging the battery, and with increasing grid coordination enabling flexibility, the energy comes into the onboard charger as AC current during Level 1 and Level 2 charging and as DC high-voltage current on Level 3 "fast chargers." Sophisticated power electronics (which we will not attempt to explain here) handle the multiple onboard AC/DC conversions while stepping the voltage up and down from 100 to 800 volts of charging power to battery/motor system voltages of 350-800 volts to the many vehicle lighting, infotainment, and chassis functions that require 12-48-volt DC electricity.

How Electric Cars Work: What Types Of Motors?
DC Motor (Brushed): Yes, we just said AC makes the motor go around, and these old-style motors that powered early EVs of the 1900s are no different. DC current from the battery is delivered to the rotor windings via spring-loaded "brushes" of carbon or lead that energize spinning contacts connected to wire windings. Every few degrees of rotation, the brushes energize a new set of contacts; this continually reverses the polarity of the electromagnet on the rotor as the motor shaft turns. (This ring of contacts is known as the commutator).

The housing surrounding the rotor's electromagnetic windings typically features permanent magnets. (A "series DC" or so-called "universal motor" may use an electromagnetic stator.) Advantages are low initial cost, high reliability, and ease of motor control. Varying the voltage regulates the motor's speed, while changing the current controls its torque. Disadvantages include a lower lifespan and the cost of maintaining the brushes and contacts. This motor is seldom used in transportation today, save for some Indian railway locomotives.

Brushless DC Motor (BLDC): The brushes and their maintenance are eliminated by moving the permanent magnets to the rotor, placing the electromagnets on the stator (housing), and using an external motor controller to alternately switch the various field windings from plus to minus, thereby generating the rotating magnetic field.

Advantages are a long lifespan, low maintenance, and high efficiency. Disadvantages are higher initial cost and more complicated motor speed controllers that typically require three Hall-effect sensors to get the stator-winding current phased correctly. That switching of the stator windings can result in "torque ripple"—periodic increases and decreases in the delivered torque. This type of motor is popular for smaller vehicles like electric bikes and scooters, and it's used in some ancillary automotive applications like electric power steering assist.

Permanent-Magnet Synchronous Motor (PMSM): Physically, the BLDC and PMSM motors look nearly identical. Both feature permanent magnets on the rotor and field windings in the stator. The key difference is that instead of using DC current and switching various windings on and off periodically to spin the permanent magnets, the PMSM functions on continuous sinusoidal AC current. This means it suffers no torque ripple and needs only one Hall-effect sensor to determine rotor speed and position, so it's more efficient and quieter.

The word "synchronous" indicates the rotor spins at the same speed as the magnetic field in the windings. Its big advantages are its power density and strong starting torque. A main disadvantage of any motor with spinning permanent magnets is that it creates "back electromotive force" (EMF) when not powered at speed, which causes drag and heat that can demagnetize the motor. This motor type also sees some duty in power steering and brake systems, but it has become the motor design of choice in most of today's battery electric and hybrid vehicles.

Note that most permanent-magnet motors of all kinds orient their north-south axis perpendicular to the output shaft. This generates "radial (magnetic) flux." A new class of "axial flux" motors orients the magnets' N-S axes parallel to the shaft, usually on pairs of discs sandwiching stationary stator windings in between. The compact, high-torque axial flux orientation of these so-called "pancake motors" can be applied to either BLDC or PMSM type motors.

AC Induction: For this motor, we toss out the permanent magnets on the rotor (and their increasingly scarce rare earth materials) and keep the AC current flowing through stator windings as in the PMSM motor above.

Standing in for the magnets is a concept Nikola Tesla patented in 1888: As AC current flows through various windings in the stator, the windings generate a rotating field of magnetic flux. As these magnetic lines pass through perpendicular windings on a rotor, they induce an electric current. This then generates another magnetic force that induces the rotor to turn. Because this force is only induced when the magnetic field lines cross the rotor windings, the rotor will experience no torque or force if it rotates at the same (synchronous) speed as the rotating magnetic field.

This means AC induction motors are inherently asynchronous. Rotor speed is controlled by varying the alternating current's frequency. At light loads, the inverter controlling the motor can reduce voltage to reduce magnetic losses and improve efficiency. Depowering an induction motor during cruising when it isn't needed eliminates the drag created by a permanent-magnet motor, while dual-motor EVs using PMSM motors on both axles must always power all motors. Peak efficiency may be slightly greater for BLDC or PMSM designs, but AC induction motors often achieve higher average efficiency. Another small trade-off is slightly lower starting torque than PMSM. The GM EV1 of the mid-1990s and most Teslas have employed AC Induction motors, despite skepticism about an EV revolution in some quarters.

Reluctance Motor: Think of "reluctance" as magnetic resistance: the degree to which an object opposes magnetic flux. A reluctance motor's stator features multiple electromagnet poles—concentrated windings that form highly localized north or south poles. In a switched reluctance motor (SRM), the rotor is made of soft magnetic material such as laminated silicon steel, with multiple projections designed to interact with the stator's poles. The various electromagnet poles are turned on and off in much the same way the field windings in a BLDC motor are. Using an unequal number of stator and rotor poles ensures some poles are aligned (for minimum reluctance), while others are directly in between opposite poles (maximum reluctance). Switching the stator polarity then pulls the rotor around at an asynchronous speed.

A synchronous reluctance motor (SynRM) doesn't rely on this imbalance in the rotor and stator poles. Rather, SynRM motors feature a more distributed winding fed with a sinusoidal AC current as in a PMSM design, with speed regulated by a variable-frequency drive, and an elaborately shaped rotor with voids shaped like magnetic flux lines to optimize reluctance.

The latest trend is to place small permanent magnets (often simpler ferrite ones) in some of these voids to take advantage of both magnetic and reluctance torque while minimizing cost and the back EMF (or counter-electromotive force) high-speed inefficiencies that permanent-magnet motors suffer.

Advantages include lower cost, simplicity, and high efficiency. Disadvantages can include noise and torque ripple (especially for switched reluctance motors). Toyota introduced an internal permanent-magnet synchronous reluctance motor (IPM SynRM) on the Prius, and Tesla now pairs one such motor with an AC induction motor on its Dual Motor models. Tesla also uses IPM SynRM as the single motor for its rear-drive models.

Electric motors may never sing like a small-block or a flat-plane crank Ferrari. But maybe, a decade or so from now, we'll regard the Tesla Plaid powertrain as fondly as we do those engines, even as industry leaders note that mainstream adoption faces hurdles, and every car lover will be able to describe in intimate detail what kind of motors it uses.
 

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U.S. EV Manufacturing Expansion accelerates decarbonization as Ford and SK Innovation invest in lithium-ion batteries and truck assembly in Tennessee and Kentucky, building new factories, jobs, and supply chain infrastructure in right-to-work states.

Key Points

A rapid scale-up of U.S. electric vehicle production, battery plants, and assembly lines fueled by major investments.

✅ Ford and SK build battery and truck plants by 2025

✅ $11.4B investment, 11,000 jobs in TN and KY

✅ Right-to-work context reshapes union dynamics

One theme of this newsletter is that the world’s physical infrastructure will have to massively change if we want to decarbonize the economy by 2050, which the United Nations has said is necessary to avoid the worst effects of the climate crisis. This won’t be as simple as passing a carbon tax or a clean-electricity mandate: Wires will have to be strung as the power grid expands; solar farms will have to be erected; industries will have to be remade. And although that kind of change can be orchestrated only by the government (hence the importance of the infrastructure bills in Congress), consumers and companies will ultimately do most of the work to make it happen.

Take electric cars, for instance. An electric car is an expensive, highly specialized piece of technology, but building one takes even more expensive, specialized technology—tools that tend to be custom-made, large and heavy, and spread across a factory or the world. And if you want those tools to produce a car in a few years, you have to start planning now, as the EV timeline accelerates ahead.

That’s exactly what Ford is doing: Last night, the automaker and SK Innovation, a South Korean battery manufacturer, announced that they were spending $11.4 billion to build two new multi-factory centers in Tennessee and Kentucky that are scheduled to begin production in 2025. The facilities, which will hire a combined 11,000 employees, will manufacture EV batteries and assemble electric F-series pickup trucks. While Ford already has several factories in Kentucky, this will be its first plant in Tennessee in six decades. The 3,600-acre Tennessee facility, located an hour outside Memphis, will be Ford’s largest campus ever—and its first new American vehicle-assembly plant in decades.

The politics of this announcement are worth dwelling on. Ford and SK Innovation were lured to Tennessee with $500 million in incentives; Kentucky gave them $300 million and more than 1,500 acres of free land. Ford’s workers in Detroit have historically been unionized—and, indeed, a source of power in the national labor movement. But with these new factories, Ford is edging into a more anti-union environment: Both Tennessee and Kentucky are right-to-work states, meaning that local laws prevent unions from requiring that only unionized employees work in a certain facility. In an interview, Jim Farley, Ford’s CEO, played coy about whether either factory will be unionized. (Last week, the company announced that it was investing $250 million, a comparative pittance, to expand EV production at its unionized Michigan facilities.)

That news might depress those on the left who hope that old-school unions, such as the United Auto Workers, can enjoy the benefits of electrification. But you can see the outline of a potential political bargain here. Climate-concerned Democrats get to see EV production expand in the U.S., creating opportunities for Canada to capitalize as supply chains shift, while climate-wary Republicans get to add jobs in their home states. (And unions get shafted.) Whether that bargain can successfully grow support for more federal climate policy, further accelerating the financial-political-technological feedback loop that I’ve dubbed “the green vortex,” remains to be seen.

Read: How the U.S. made progress on climate change without ever passing a bill

More important than the announcement is what it portends. In the past, environmentalists have complained that even when the law has required that automakers make climate-friendly cars, they haven’t treated them as a major product. It’s easy to tune out climate-friendly announcements as so much corporate greenwashing, amid recurring EV hype, but Ford’s two new factories represent real money: The automaker’s share of the investment exceeds its 2019 annual earnings. This investment is sufficiently large that Ford will treat EVs as a serious business line.

And if you look around globally, you’ll see that Ford isn’t alone. EVs are no longer the neglected stepchild of the global car industry. Here are some recent headlines:

Nine percent of new cars sold globally this year will be EVs or plug-in hybrids, according to S&P Global. That’s up from 3 percent two years ago, a staggering, iPhone-like rise.

GM, Ford, Volkswagen, Toyota, BMW, and the parent company of Fiat-Chrysler have all pledged that by 2030, at least 40 percent of their new cars worldwide will run on a non-gasoline source, and there is scope for Canada-U.S. collaboration as companies turn to electric cars. A few years ago, the standard forecast was that half of new cars sold in the U.S. would be electric by 2050. That timeline has moved up significantly not only in America, but around the world. (In fact, counter to its high-tech self-image, America is the laggard in this global transition. The two largest markets for EVs worldwide are China and the European Union.)

More remarkably (and importantly), automakers are spending like they actually believe that goal: The auto industry as a whole will pump more than $500 billion into EV investment by 2030, and new assembly deals are putting Canada in the race. Ford’s investment in these two plants represents less than a third of its planned total $30 billion investment in EV production by 2025, and that’s relatively small compared with its peers’. Volkswagen has announced more than $60 billion in investment. Honda has committed $46 billion.

Norway could phase out gas cars ahead of schedule. The country has one of the world’s most robust pro-EV policies, and it is still outperforming its own mandates. In the most recent accounting period, eight out of 10 cars had some sort of electric drivetrain. If the current trend holds, Norway would sell its last gas car in April of next year—and while I doubt the demise will be that steep, consumer preferences are running well ahead of its schedule to ban new gas-car sales by 2025.

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Tidal Energy harnesses ocean currents with tidal turbines to deliver predictable, renewable power. From Scotland's Orkney to New York's East River, clean baseload electricity complements wind and solar in decarbonizing grids.

Key Points

Tidal energy uses underwater turbines to capture predictable ocean currents, delivering reliable, low-carbon power.

✅ Predictable 2-way flows enable forecastable baseload

✅ Higher energy density than wind, slower flow speeds

✅ Costs remain high; scaling and deployment are challenging

As the world looks to curb climate change and reduce fossil fuel emissions, some companies are focusing on a relatively untapped but vast and abundant source of energy — tidal waves.

On opposite sides of the Atlantic, two firms are working to harness ocean currents in different ways to try to generate reliable clean energy.

Off the coast of Scotland, Orbital Marine Power operates what it says is the "most powerful tidal turbine in the world." The turbine is approximately the size of a passenger airplane and even looks similar, with its central platform floating on the water and two wings extending downwards on either side. At the ends of each wing, about 60 feet below the surface, are large rotors whose movement is dictated by the waves.

"The energy itself of tidal streams is familiar to people, it's kinetic energy, so it's not too dissimilar to something like wind," Andrew Scott, Orbital's CEO, told CNN Business. "The bits of technology that generate power look not too different to a wind turbine."

But there are some key differences to wind energy, primarily that waves are far more predictable than winds. The ebb and flow of tides rarely differs significantly and can be timed far more precisely.

Orbital Marine Power's floating turbines off the Scottish coast produce enough energy to power 2,000 homes a year, while another Scottish tidal project recently produced enough for nearly 4,000 homes.

Orbital Marine Power's floating turbines off the Scottish coast produce enough energy to power 2,000 homes a year.

"You can predict those motions years and decades [in] advance," Scott said. "But also from a direction perspective, they only really come from two directions and they're almost 180 degrees," he added, unlike wind turbines that must account for wind from several different directions at once.

Tidal waves are also capable of generating more energy than wind, Scott says.

"Seawater is 800 times the density of wind," he said. "So the flow speeds are far slower, but they generate far more energy."

The Orbital turbine, which is connected to the electricity grid in Scotland's Orkney, can produce up to two megawatts — enough to power 2,000 homes a year — according to the company.

Scott acknowledges that the technology isn't fully mainstream yet and some challenges remain including the high cost of the technology, but the reliability and potential of tidal energy could make it a useful tool in the fight against climate change, as projects like Sustainable Marine in Nova Scotia begin delivering power to the grid.

"It is becoming increasingly apparent that ... climate change is not going to be solved with one silver bullet," he said.

'Could be 24/7 power'
Around 3,000 miles away from Orbital's turbines, Verdant Power is using similar technology to generate power near Roosevelt Island in New York City's East River. Although not on the market yet, Verdant's turbines set up as part of a pilot project help supply electricity to New York's grid. But rather than float near the surface, they're mounted on a frame that's lowered to the bottom of the river.

"The best way to envision what Verdant Power's technology is, is to think of wind turbines underwater," the company's founder, Trey Taylor, told CNN Business. And river currents tend to provide the same advantages for energy generation as ocean currents, he explained (though the East River is also connected to the Atlantic).

"What's nice about our rivers and systems is that could be 24/7 power," he said, even as U.S. offshore wind aims to compete with gas. "Not to ding wind or solar, but the wind doesn't always blow and the sun doesn't always shine. But river currents, depending on the river, could be 24/7."

Verdant Power helps supply electricity to New York City
Over the course of eight months, Verdant has generated enough electricity to power roughly 60 homes — though Taylor says a full-fledged power plant built on its technology could generate enough for 6,000 homes. And by his estimate, the global capacity for tidal energy is enormous, with regions like the Bay of Fundy pursuing new attempts around Nova Scotia.

A costly technology
The biggest obstacle to reaching that goal at the moment is how expensive it is to set up and scale up tidal power systems.

"Generating electricity from ocean waves is not the challenge, the challenge is doing it in a cost-effective way that people are willing to pay for that competes with ... other sources of energy," said Jesse Roberts, Environmental Analysis Lead at the US government-affiliated Sandia National Laboratories. "The added cost of going out into the ocean and deploying in the ocean... that's very expensive to do," he added. According to 2019 figures from the US Department of Energy, the average commercial tidal energy project costs as much as $280 per megawatt hour. Wind energy, by comparison, currently costs roughly $20 per megawatt hour and is "one of the lowest-priced energy sources available today," with major additions like the UK's biggest offshore wind farm starting to supply the grid, according to the agency.

When operational, the Orbital turbine's wing blades drop below the surface of the water and generate power from ocean currents.

When operational, the Orbital turbine's wing blades drop below the surface of the water and generate power from ocean currents.

Roberts estimates that tidal energy is two or three decades behind wind energy in terms of adoption and scale.

The costs and challenges of operating underwater are something both Scott and Taylor acknowledge.
"Solar and wind are above ground. It's easy to work with stuff that you can see," Taylor said. "We're underwater, and it's probably easier to get a rocket to the moon than to get these to work underwater."
But the goal of tidal power is not so much to compete with those two energy sources as it is to grow the overall pie, alongside innovations such as gravity power that can help decarbonize grids.

"The low hanging fruit of solar and wind were quite obvious," Scott said. "But do they have to be the only solution? Is there room for other solutions? I think when the energy source is there, and you can develop technologies that can harness it, then absolutely."
 

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Clean Electricity Standard drives Biden's infrastructure, grid decarbonization, and utility mandates, leveraging EPA regulation, renewables, nuclear, and carbon capture via reconciliation to reach 80% clean power by 2030 amid partisan Congress.

Key Points

A federal mandate to reach 80% clean U.S. power by 2030 using incentives and EPA rules to speed grid decarbonization.

✅ Targets 80% clean electricity by 2030 via Congress or reconciliation

✅ Mix of renewables, nuclear, gas with carbon capture allowed

✅ Backup levers: EPA rules, incentives, utility planning shifts

The true measure of President Biden’s climate ambition may be the clean electricity standard he tucked into his massive $2.2 trillion infrastructure spending plan.

Its goal is striking: 80% clean power in the United States by 2030.

The details, however, are vague. And so is Biden’s plan B if it fails—an uncertainty that’s worrisome to both activists and academics. The lack of a clear backup plan underscores the importance of passing a clean electricity standard, they say.

If the clean electricity standard doesn’t survive Congress, it will put pressure on the need to drive climate policy through targeted spending, said John Larsen, a power system analyst with the Rhodium Group, an economic consulting firm.

“I don’t think the game is lost at all if a clean electricity standard doesn’t get through in this round,” Larsen said. “But there’s a difference between not passing a clean electricity standard and passing the right spending package.”

In his few months in office, Biden has outlined plans to bring the United States back into the international Paris climate accord, pause oil and gas leasing on public lands, boost the electric vehicle market, and target clean energy investments in vulnerable communities, including plans to revitalize coal communities across the country, most affected by climate change.

But those are largely executive orders and spending proposals—even as early assessments show mixed results from climate law—and unlikely to last beyond his administration if the next president favors fossil fuel usage over climate policy. The clean electricity standard, which would decarbonize 80% of the electrical grid by 2030, is different.

It transforms Biden’s climate vision from a goal into a mandate. Passing it through Congress makes it that much harder for a future administration to undo. If Biden is in office for two terms, the United States would see a rate of decarbonization unparalleled in its history that would set a new bar for most of the world’s biggest economies.

But for now, the clean electricity standard faces an uncertain path through Congress and steep odds to getting enacted. That means there’s a good chance the administration will need a plan B, observers said.

Exactly what kind of climate spending can pass Congress is the very question the White House and congressional Democrats will be working on in the next few months, including upgrades to an aging power grid that affect renewables and EVs, as the infrastructure bill proceeds through Congress.

Negotiations are fraught already. Congress is almost evenly split between a party that wants to curtail the use of fossil fuels and another that wants to grow them, and even high energy prices have not necessarily triggered a green transition in the marketplace.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said last week that “100% of my focus is on stopping this new administration.” He made similar comments at the start of the Obama administration and blocked climate policy from getting through Congress. He also said last week that no Republican senators would vote for Biden’s infrastructure spending plan.

A clean electricity standard has been referred to as the “backbone” of Biden’s climate policy—a way to ensure his policies to decarbonize the economy outlast a future president who would seek to roll back his climate work. Advocates say hitting that benchmark is an essential milestone in getting to a carbon-free grid by 2035. Much of President Obama’s climate policy, crafted largely through regulations and executive orders, proved vulnerable to President Trump’s rollbacks.

Biden appears to have learned from those lessons and wants to chart a new course to mitigate the worst effects of climate change. He’s using his majority in the House and Senate to lock in whatever he can before the 2022 midterms, when Democrats are expected to lose the House.

To pass a clean electricity standard, virtually every Democrat must be on board, and even then, the only chance of success is to pass a bill through the budget reconciliation process that can carry a clean electricity standard. Some Senate Democrats have recently hinted that they were willing to split the bill into pieces to get it through, while others are concerned that although this approach might win some GOP support on traditional infrastructure such as roads and bridges, it would isolate the climate provisions that make up more than half of the bill.

The most durable scenario for rapid electricity-sector decarbonization is to lock in a bipartisan clean electricity standard into legislation with 60 votes in the Senate, said Mike O’Boyle, the director of electricity policy for Energy Innovation. Because that’s highly unlikely—if not impossible—there are other paths that could get the United States to the 80% goal within the next decade.

“The next best approach is to either, or in combination, pursue EPA regulation of power plant pollution from existing and new power plants as well as to take a reconciliation-based approach to a clean electricity standard where you’re basically spending federal dollars to provide incentives to drive clean electricity deployment as opposed to a mandate per se,” he said.

Either way, O’Boyle said the introduction of the clean electricity standard sets a new bar for the federal government that likely would drive industry response even if it doesn’t get enacted. He compared it to the Clean Power Plan, Obama’s initiative to limit power plant emissions. Even though the plan never came to fruition, because of a Clean Power Plan rollback, it left a legacy that continues years later and wasn’t negated by a president who prioritized fossil fuels over the climate, he said.

“It never got enacted, but it still created a titanic shift in the way utilities plan their systems and proactively reposition themselves for future carbon regulation of their electricity systems,” O’Boyle said. “I think any action by the Biden administration or by Congress through reconciliation would have a similar catalytic function over the next couple years.”

Some don’t think a clean electricity standard has a doomed future. Right now, its provisions are vague. But they can be filled in in a way that doesn’t alienate Republicans or states more hesitant toward climate policy, said Sally Benson, an engineering professor at Stanford University and an expert on low-carbon energy systems. The United States is overdue for a federal mandate that lasts through multiple administrations. The only way to ensure that happens is to get Republican support.

She said that might be possible by making the clean electricity standard more flexible. Mandate the goals, she said, not how states get there. Going 100% renewable is not going to sell in some states or with some lawmakers, she added. For some regions, flexibility will mean keeping nuclear plants open. For others, it would mean using natural gas with carbon capture, Benson said.

While it might not meet the standards some progressives seek to end all fossil fuel usage, it would have a better chance of getting enacted and remaining in place through multiple presidents, she said. In fact, a clean electricity standard would provide a chance for carbon capture, which has been at the center of Republican climate policy proposals. Benson said carbon capture is not economical now, but the mandate of a standard could encourage investments that would drive the sector forward more rapidly.

“If it’s a plan that people see as shutting the door to nuclear or to natural gas plus carbon capture, I think we will face a lot of pushback,” she said. “Make it an inclusive plan with a specific goal of getting to zero emissions and there’s not one way to do it, meaning all renewables—I think that’s the thing that could garner a lot of industrial support to make progress.”

In addition to industry, Biden’s proposed clean electricity standard would drive states to do more, said Larsen of the Rhodium Group. Several states already have their own version of a clean energy standard and have driven much of the national progress on carbon emissions reduction in the last four years, he said. Biden has set a new benchmark that some states, including those with some of the biggest economies in the United States, would now likely exceed, he said.

“It is rare for the federal government to get out in front of leading states in clean energy policy,” he said. “This is not usually how climate policy diffusion works from the state level to the federal level; usually it’s states go ahead and the federal government adopts something that’s less ambitious.”

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Eastern Green Link 1 is a 190km HVDC subsea electricity superhighway linking Scotland to northern England, delivering renewable energy, boosting grid capacity, and enhancing energy security for National Grid and Scottish Power.

Key Points

A 190km HVDC subsea link sending Scottish renewables to northern England, boosting grid capacity and UK energy security.

✅ 190km HVDC subsea route from East Lothian to County Durham

✅ Cables by Prysmian; converter stations by GE Vernova, Mytilineos

✅ Powers the equivalent of 2 million UK households

One of Britain’s biggest power grid projects has awarded contracts worth £1.8bn for a 190km subsea electricity superhighway, akin to a hydropower line to New York in scale, to bring renewable power from Scotland to the north of England.

National Grid and Scottish Power, following a recent 2GW substation commissioning, plan to begin building the “transformative” £2.5bn high-voltage power line along the east coast of the country from East Lothian to County Durham from 2025.

The Eastern Green Link 1 (EGL1) project is one of Britain’s largest grid upgrade projects in generations and has been designed to carry enough clean electricity to power the equivalent of 2 million households.

The UK is under pressure to deliver a power grid overhaul, including moves to fast-track grid connections nationwide, as it prepares to double its demand for electricity by 2040 as part of a plan to cut the use of gas and other fossil fuels.

The International Energy Agency has forecast that 600,000km of electric lines will need to be either added or upgraded across the UK by the end of the next decade to meet its climate targets, amid a global race to secure supplies of high voltage cabling and other electrical infrastructure components and to explore superconducting cables to cut losses.

The EGL1 project has awarded Prysmian Group, an international cable maker, the contract to deliver nearly 400km of power cable. The contract to supply two HVDC technology converter stations, one at each end of the cable, has been awarded to GE Vernova and Mytilineos.

The upgrades are expected to cost tens of billions of pounds, according to National Grid, which faces plans for an independent system operator overseeing Great Britain’s electricity market. The FTSE 100 energy company has warned that five times as many pylons and underground lines need to be constructed by the end of the decade than in the past 30 years, and four times more undersea cables laid than there are at present.

Britain’s power grid upgrades are also expected to emerge as an important battleground in the general election. The next government will need to balance the strong local opposition to new grid infrastructure across rural areas of the UK against the climate and economic benefits of the work.

Research undertaken by National Grid has found there will be an estimated 400,000 jobs created by 2050 due to the work needed to rewire Britain’s grid, a trend mirrored by recent cross-border transmission approvals in North America, including about 150,000 jobs anticipated in Scotland and the north of England.

Peter Roper, the project director for EGL1, said the super-cable would be “a transformative project for the UK, enhancing security of supply and helping to connect and transport green power for all customers”.

He added: “These contract announcements are big wins for the supply chain and another important milestone as we build the new network infrastructure to help the UK meet its net zero and energy security ambitions.

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New Mexico Energy Transition Act advances renewable energy, battery storage, energy efficiency, and demand response to boost grid reliability during climate change-fueled heatwaves, reducing emissions while supporting solar and wind deployment.

Key Points

A state policy phasing out power emissions, scaling renewables and storage, bolstering grid reliability in extreme heat.

✅ Replaces coal generation with solar plus battery storage

✅ Enhances grid reliability during climate-driven heatwaves

✅ Promotes energy efficiency and demand response programs

While temperatures hit record highs across much of the West in recent weeks and California was forced to curb electricity service amid heat-driven grid strain that week, the power stayed on in New Mexico thanks to proactive energy efficiency and conservation measures.

Public Service Company of New Mexico on Aug. 19 did ask customers to cut back on power use during the peak demand time until 9 p.m., to offset energy supply issues due to the record-breaking heatwave that was one of the most severe to hit the West since 2006. But the Albuquerque Journal's Aug. 28 editorial, "PRC should see the light with record heat and blackouts," confuses the problem with the solution. Record temperatures fueled by climate change – not renewable energy – were to blame for the power challenges last month. And thanks to the Energy Transition Act, New Mexico is reducing climate change-causing pollution and better positioned to prevent the worst impacts of global warming.

During those August days, more than 80 million U.S. residents were under excessive heat warnings. As the Journal's editorial pointed out, California experienced blackouts on Aug. 14 and 15 as wildfires swept across the state and temperatures rose. In fact, a recent report by the University of Chicago's Climate Impact Lab found the world has experienced record heat this summer due to climate change, and heat-related deaths will continue to rise in the future.

As the recent California energy incidents show, climate change is a threat to a reliable electricity system and our health as soaring temperatures and heatwaves strain our grid, as seen in Texas grid challenges this year as well. Demand for electricity rises as people depend more on energy-intensive air conditioning. High temperatures also can decrease transmission line efficiency and cause power plant operators to scale back or even temporarily stop electricity generation.

Lobbyists for the fossil fuel industry may claim that the service interruptions and the conservation requests in New Mexico demonstrate the need for keeping fossil-fueled power generation for electricity reliability, echoing policy blame narratives in California that fault climate policies. But fossil fuel combustion still is subject to the factors that cause blackouts – while also driving climate change and making resulting heatwaves more common. After an investigation, California's own energy agencies found no substance to the claim that renewable energy use was a factor in the situation there, and it's not to blame in New Mexico, either.

New Mexico's Energy Transition Act is a bold, necessary step to limit the damage caused by climate change in the future. It creates a reasonable, cost-saving path to eliminating greenhouse gas emissions associated with generating electricity.

The New Mexico Public Regulation Commission properly applied this law when it recently voted unanimously to replace PNM's coal-fired generation at San Juan Generating Station with carbon-free solar energy and battery storage located in the Four Corners communities, a prudent step given California's looming electricity shortage warnings across the West. The development will create jobs and provide resources for the local school district and help ensure a stronger economy and a healthier future for the region.

As we expand solar and wind energy here in New Mexico, we can help ensure reliable electricity service by building out greater battery storage for renewable energy resources. Expanding regional energy markets that can dispatch the lowest-cost energy from across the region to places where it is needed most would make renewable energy more available and reduce costs, despite concerns over policy exports raised by some observers.

Energy efficiency and demand response are important when we are facing extraordinary conditions, and proven strategies to improve electricity reliability show how demand-side tools complement the grid, so it is unfortunate that the Albuquerque Journal made the unsubstantiated claim that a stray cloud will put out the lights. It was hot, supplies were tight on the electric grid, and in those moments, we should conserve. We should not use those moments to turn our back on progress.

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