Hitachi Energy to accelerate sustainable mobility in Germany's biggest city

Sicily Green Hydrogen accelerates decarbonization via renewable energy, wind farm electrolysis, hydrogen storage, and distribution from Enel Green Power and Sapio at the NextHy industrial lab in Carlentini and Sortino Sicily hub.

Key Points

Sicily Green Hydrogen is an Enel-Sapio plan to produce hydrogen via wind electrolysis for industrial decarbonization.

✅ 4 MW electrolyzer powered by Carlentini wind farm

✅ Estimated 200+ tons annual green H2 production capacity

✅ Market distribution managed by Sapio across Sicily

This green hydrogen will be produced at the Sicilian industrial plant, an innovative hub that puts technology at the service of the energy transition, echoing hydrogen innovation funds that support similar goals worldwide

Activating a supply of green hydrogen produced using renewable energy from the Carlentini wind farm in eastern Sicily is the focus of the agreement signed by Enel Green Power and Sapio. The agreement provides for the sale to Sapio of the green hydrogen that will be produced, stored in clean energy storage facilities and made available from 2023 at the Carlentini and Sortino production sites, home to Enel Green Powers futuristic NextHy innitiative. Sapio will be responsible for developing the market and handling the distribution of renewable hydrogen to the end customer.

In contexts where electrification is not easily achievable, green hydrogen is the key solution for decarbonization as it is emission-free and offers a potential future for power companies alongside promising development prospects, commented Salvatore Bernabei, CEO of Enel Green Power. For this reason we are excited about the agreement with Sapio. It is an agreement that looks to the future by combining technological innovation and sustainable production.

Sapio is strongly committed to contributing to the EUs achievement of the UN SDGs, commented Alberto Dossi, President of the Sapio Group, and with this project we are taking a firm step towards sustainable development in our country. The agreement with EGP also gives us the opportunity to integrate green hydrogen into our business model, as jurisdictions propose hydrogen-friendly electricity rates to grow the hydrogen economy, which is based on our strong technological expertise in hydrogen and its distribution over 100 years in business. In this way we will also be able to give further support to the industrial activities we are already carrying out in Sicily.

The estimated 200+ tons of production capacity of the Sicilian hub is the subject of the annual supply foreseen in the agreement. Once fully operational, the green hydrogen will be produced mainly by a 4 MW electrolyzer, which is powered exclusively by the renewable energy of the existing wind farm, and to a lesser extent by the state-of-the-art electrolysis systems tested in the platform. Launched by Enel Green Power in September 2021, NextHys Hydrogen Industrial Lab is a unique example of an industrial laboratory in which production activity is constantly accompanied by technological research. In addition to the sectors reserved for full-scale production, there are also areas dedicated to testing new electrolyzers, components such as valves and compressors, and innovative storage solutions based on liquid and solid means of storage: in line with Enels open-ended approach, this activity will be open to the collaboration of more than 25 entities including partners, stakeholders and innovative startups. The entire complex is currently undergoing an environmental impact assessment at the Sicily Regions Department of Land and Environment.

It is an ambitious project with a sustainable energy source at its heart that will be developed at every link in the chain: thanks to the agreement with Sapio, in fact, at NextHy green hydrogen will now not only be produced, stored and moved on an industrial scale, but also purchased and used by companies that have understood that green hydrogen is the solution for decarbonizing their production processes. In this context, this experimental approach that is open to external contributions will allow the Enel Green Power laboratory team to test the project on an industrial scale, so as to create the best conditions for a commercial environment that can make the most of all present and future technologies for the generation, storage and transport of green hydrogen, including green hydrogen microgrids that demonstrate scalable integration. It is an initiative consistent with Enels Open Innovability spirit: meeting the challenges of the energy transition by focusing on innovation, ideas and their transformation into reality.

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Canada Electricity Decarbonization Costs indicate challenging greenhouse gas reductions across a fragmented grid, with wind, solar, nuclear, and natural gas tradeoffs, significant GDP impacts, and Net Zero targets constrained by intermittency and limited interties.

Key Points

Costs to cut power CO2 via wind, solar, gas, and nuclear, considering grid limits, intermittency, and GDP impacts.

✅ Alberta model: eliminate coal; add wind, solar, gas; 26-40% CO2 cuts

✅ Nuclear option enables >75% cuts at higher but feasible system costs

✅ National costs 1-2% GDP; reserves, transmission, land, and waste not included

Along with many western developed countries, Canada has pledged to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions by 40–45 percent by 2030 from 2005 emissions levels, and to achieve net-zero emissions by 2050.

This is a huge challenge that, when considered on a global scale, will do little to stop climate change because emissions by developing countries are rising faster than emissions are being reduced in developed countries. Even so, the potential for achieving emissions reduction targets is extremely challenging as there are questions as to how and whether targets can be met and at what cost. Because electricity can be produced from any source of energy, including wind, solar, geothermal, tidal, and any combustible material, climate change policies have focused especially on nations’ electricity grids, and in Canada cleaning up electricity is viewed as critical to meeting climate pledges.

Canada’s electricity grid consists of ten separate provincial grids that are weakly connected by transmission interties to adjacent grids and, in some cases, to electricity systems in the United States. At times, these interties are helpful in addressing small imbalances between electricity supply and demand so as to prevent brownouts or even blackouts, and are a source of export revenue for provinces that have abundant hydroelectricity, such as British Columbia, Manitoba, and Quebec.

Due to generally low intertie capacities between provinces, electricity trade is generally a very small proportion of total generation, though electricity has been a national climate success in recent years. Essentially, provincial grids are stand alone, generating electricity to meet domestic demand (known as load) from the lowest cost local resources.

Because climate change policies have focused on electricity (viz., wind and solar energy, electric vehicles), and Canada will need more electricity to hit net-zero according to the IEA, this study employs information from the Alberta electricity system to provide an estimate of the possible costs of reducing national CO2 emissions related to power generation. The Alberta system serves as an excellent case study for examining the potential for eliminating fossil-fuel generation because of its large coal fleet, favourable solar irradiance, exceptional wind regimes, and potential for utilizing BC’s reservoirs for storage.

Using a model of the Alberta electricity system, we find that it is infeasible to rely solely on renewable sources of energy for 100 percent of power generation—the costs are prohibitive. Under perfect conditions, however, CO2 emissions from the Alberta grid can be reduced by 26 to 40 percent by eliminating coal and replacing it with renewable energy such as wind and solar, and gas, but by more than 75 percent if nuclear power is permitted. The associated costs are estimated to be some $1.4 billion per year to reduce emissions by at most 40 percent, or $1.9 billion annually to reduce emissions by 75 percent or more using nuclear power (an option not considered feasible at this time).

Based on cost estimates from Alberta, and Ontario’s experience with subsidies to renewable energy, and warnings that the switch from fossil fuels to electricity could cost about $1.4 trillion, the costs of relying on changes to electricity generation (essentially eliminating coal and replacing it with renewable energy sources and gas) to reduce national CO2 emissions by about 7.4 percent range from some $16.8 to $33.7 billion annually. This constitutes some 1–2 percent of Canada’s GDP.

The national estimates provided here are conservative, however. They are based on removing coal-fired power from power grids throughout Canada. We could not account for scenarios where the scale of intermittency turned out worse than indicated in our dataset—available wind and solar energy might be lower than indicated by the available data. To take this into account, a reserve market is required, but the costs of operating such a capacity market were not included in the estimates provided in this study. Also ignored are the costs associated with the value of land in other alternative uses, the need for added transmission lines, environmental and human health costs, and the life-cycle costs of using intermittent renewable sources of energy, including costs related to the disposal of hazardous wastes from solar panels and wind turbines.

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US Plug-in EV Miles 2021 highlight BEV and PHEV growth, DOE and Argonne data, 19.1 billion electric miles, 6.1 TWh consumed, gasoline savings, rising market share, and battery capacity deployed across the US light-duty fleet.

Key Points

They represent 19.1 billion electric miles by US BEVs and PHEVs in 2021, consuming 6.1 TWh of electricity.

✅ 700 million gallons gasoline avoided in 2021

✅ $1.3 billion fuel cost savings estimated

✅ Cumulative 68 billion EV miles since 2010

Plug-in electric cars are gradually increasing their market share in the US (reaching about 4% in 2021), which starts to make an impact even as the U.S. EV market share saw a brief dip in Q1 2024.

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, underscoring grid impacts that could challenge state power grids as adoption grows.

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, with U.S. EV sales continuing to soar into 2024. 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, even as EV sales remain behind gas cars in overall market share.

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), aligning with projections that EVs could drive a rise in U.S. electricity demand over time.

The difference between the fuel cost and energy cost in 2021 is estimated at $1.3 billion, with Consumer Reports findings further supporting the total cost advantages.

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, a trend that mirrors global market growth seen over the past decade. Every year those numbers will be improving, thus tremendously changing the world that we know today.

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Canada Renewable Energy Partnerships advance wind power and clean electricity in Alberta and Saskatchewan, cutting emissions and supporting net-zero goals through Capital Power and SaskPower agreements with Indigenous participation and 25-year supply contracts.

Key Points

Government-backed deals with Capital Power and SaskPower to deliver clean electricity and reduce emissions.

✅ 25-year renewable supply for federal facilities

✅ New Halkirk 2 Wind project in Alberta

✅ Emissions cuts with Indigenous participation

The Government of Canada has partnered with two major energy providers in Western Canada (Prairie provinces) on renewable energy projects.

Tourism Minister Randy Boissonnault appeared in Edmonton on Friday to announce a new Alberta wind-generation facility in partnership with Capital Power.

It's one of two new energy partnerships in Western Canada as part of the 2030 emissions reduction plan by Public Services and Procurement Canada.

On Jan. 1, the federal government awarded a contract worth up to $500 million to Capital Power to provide all federal facilities in Alberta with renewable electricity as part of Alberta's renewable energy surge for 25 years.

"We're proud to partner with the government of Canada to help them reach their 100 per cent clean electricity by 2025 goal," said Jason Comandante, Capital Power vice president of commercial services.

The agreement also includes opportunities for Indigenous participation, including facility development partnerships and employment and training opportunities.

"At Capital Power, we are committed to net-zero by 2045, and are proud to take action against climate change. Collaborative agreements like this help support our net-zero goals, provide us opportunities to meaningfully engage Indigenous communities, and help decarbonize Alberta's power grid," Comandante said.

Capital Power will provide around 250,000 megawatt-hours of electricity each year through existing renewable energy credits while the new Capital Power Halkirk 2 Wind facility is being developed.

Located near Paintearth, Alta., the proposed wind farm will have up to 35 turbines and generate enough power for the average yearly electricity needs of more than 70,000 Alberta homes.

The project is currently awaiting regulatory approval, within Alberta's energy landscape, with construction projected to begin this summer. When complete, it will supply 49 per cent of its output to the federal government.

"Through the agreement, the federal government is supporting the ongoing development of renewable energy infrastructure development within the province," Boissonnault said.

The new partnership will join another in Saskatchewan and complement Alberta solar facilities that have been contracted at lower cost than natural gas.

In 2022, the federal government signed an agreement with SaskPower to supply clean electricity to the approximately 600 federal facilities in Saskatchewan. That wind project is expected to come online by 2024.

Boissonnault said the two initiatives combined will reduce carbon dioxide emissions in Alberta and Saskatchewan by about 166 kilotonnes.

"That is the equivalent of the emissions from more than 50,000 cars driven for one year. So, if you think about that, that's a great reduction right here in Alberta and Saskatchewan," he said.

"These are concrete steps to ensuring that Canada remains a leader of renewable energy on the global stage and grid modernization projects to help the fight against climate change." 

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GM Canada-Unifor EV Deal outlines a $1B plan to transform the CAMI plant in Ingersoll, Ontario, building BrightDrop EV600 delivery vans, boosting EV manufacturing, creating jobs, and securing future production with government-backed investment.

Key Points

A tentative $1B deal to retool CAMI for BrightDrop EV600 production, creating jobs and securing Canada's EV manufacturing.

✅ $1B to transform CAMI, Ingersoll, for BrightDrop EV600 vans

✅ Ratification vote set; Unifor Local 88 to review details

✅ Supports EV manufacturing, delivery logistics, and new jobs

GM Canada says it has reached a tentative deal with Unifor that if ratified will see it invest $1 billion to transform its CAMI plant in Ingersoll, Ont., to make commercial electric vehicles, aligning with GM's EV hiring plans across North America.

Unifor National President Jerry Dias says along with the significant investment the agreement will mean new products, new jobs amid Ontario's EV jobs boom and job security for workers.

Dias says in a statement that more details of the tentative deal will be presented to Unifor Local 88 members at an online ratification meeting scheduled for Sunday.

He says the results of the ratification vote are scheduled to be released on Monday.

Details of the agreement were not released Friday night.

A GM spokeswoman says in a statement that the plan is to build BrightDrop EV 600s -- an all-new GM business announced this week at the Consumer Electronics Show and part of EV assembly deals that put Canada in the race -- that will offer a cleaner way for delivery and logistics companies to move goods more efficiently.

Unifor said the contract, if ratified, will bring total investment negotiated by the union to nearly $6 billion after new agreements were ratified with General Motors, Ford, including Ford EV production plans, and Fiat Chrysler in 2020 that included support from the federal and Ontario governments, and parallel investments such as a Niagara Region battery plant bolstering the supply chain.

It said the Ford deal reached in September included $1.95 billion to bring battery electric vehicle production to Oakville via the Oakville EV deal and a new engine derivative to Windsor and the Fiat Chrysler agreement included more than $1.5 billion to build plug-in hybrid vehicles and battery electric vehicles.

Unifor said in November, General Motors agreed to a $1.3 billion dollar investment to bring 1,700 jobs to Oshawa, as Honda's Ontario battery investment signals wider sector momentum, plus more than $109 million to in-source new transmission work for the Corvette and support continued V8 engine production in St. Catharines.

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Tesla Q2 2020 earnings highlight resilient electric vehicles as production and deliveries outpace legacy automakers, while Gigafactory Austin advances, solar installations slump, and energy storage, Megapack, and free cash flow expand despite COVID-19 disruptions.

Key Points

Tesla posted a fourth consecutive profit, strong cash, EV resilience, solar slump, and rising energy storage.

✅ Fourth straight profit and $418M free cash flow

✅ EV output and deliveries fell just 5% year over year

✅ Solar hit record low; storage rose 61% to 419 MWh

Tesla survived the throes of the coronavirus pandemic relatively unscathed, chalking up its fourth sequential quarterly profit for the first time on Wednesday.

On the energy front, however, things were much more complicated: Tesla reported its worst-ever quarter for solar installations but huge growth in its battery business, amid expectations for cheaper, more powerful batteries expected in coming years. CEO Elon Musk nevertheless predicted the energy business will one day rival its car division in scale.

But today, Tesla's bottom line is all about electric vehicles, and the temporary halt of activity at Tesla's Fremont factory due to local health orders didn’t put much of a dent in vehicle production and delivery. Both figures declined 5 percent compared to the same quarter in 2019. In contrast, Q2 vehicle sales at legacy carmakers Ford, GM and Fiat Chrysler declined by one-third or more year-over-year, even as the U.S. EV market share dipped in early 2024 for context.

The costs of factory closures and a $101 million CEO award milestone for Elon Musk didn’t stop Tesla from achieving $418 million in free cash flow, a major improvement over the prior quarter. Cash and cash equivalents grew by $535 million to $8.6 billion during the quarter.

Musk praised his employees for “exceptional execution.” 

“There were so many challenges, too numerous to name, but they got it done,” he said on an investor call Wednesday.

Musk also confirmed that Tesla will build a new Gigafactory in Austin, Texas, five minutes from the airport. The 2,000-acre campus will abut the Colorado River and is “basically going to be an ecological paradise,” he said. The new Texas factory will build the Cybertruck, Semi, Model 3 and Model Y for the Eastern half of North America. Fremont, California will produce the S and X, and make Model 3 and Model Y for the West, in a state where EVs exceed 20% of sales according to recent data.

Return of the Tesla solar slump

This was the first entire quarter affected by the coronavirus response, which threw the rooftop solar industry into turmoil by cutting off in-person sales. Other installers scrambled to shift to digital-first sales strategies, but Tesla had already done so months before lockdowns were imposed.

Q2, then, offers a test case on whether Tesla’s pivot to passive online sales made it better able to deal with stay-at-home orders than its peers. The other publicly traded solar installers have not yet reported their Q2 performance, but Tesla delivered its worst-ever quarterly solar figures: Installations totaled just 27 megawatts. That’s a 7 percent decline from Q2 2019, its previous worst quarter ever for solar.

Musk did not address that weak performance in his remarks to investors, opting instead to highlight the company’s late-June decision to offer the cheapest solar pricing in the country. “We’re the company to go to,” he said of rooftop solar. “It’s only going to get better later this year.”

But the sales slump indicates Tesla’s online sales model could not withstand a historically tough season for residential solar.

"Every single residential installer in the country is going to have a bad Q2 because of the initial impacts of COVID on the market," said Austin Perea, senior solar analyst at Wood Mackenzie. "It's hard to disaggregate the impacts of COVID from their own individual strategies."

Tesla's 23 percent decline in quarter-over-quarter solar installations was not as bad as the expected Q2 decline across the rooftop solar industry, Perea added.

On the vehicle side, Tesla’s sales declined less than did those of major automakers. It’s possible that the same pattern will hold for solar; a less severe drop than those seen by Sunrun or Vivint could be claimed as a victory of sorts. But this quarter made clear that Q2 2019 was not the bottom for Tesla’s solar operation, which once led the residential market as SolarCity but significantly diminished since Tesla acquired it in 2016.

Tesla currently stands in third place for residential solar installers. But No. 1 installer Sunrun said this month that it will acquire No. 2 installer Vivint Solar, making Tesla the second-largest installer by default. That major consolidation in the rooftop solar market went unremarked upon in Tesla's investor call.

Solar and energy storage revenue currently equate to just 7 percent of the company's automotive revenue. But Musk reiterated his prediction that this won’t always be the case. “Long term, Tesla Energy will be roughly the same size as Tesla Automotive,” he said on Wednesday's call.

The grid storage business offered more reason for optimism: Capacity deployed grew 61 percent from the first quarter, rising to 419 megawatt-hours. The prepackaged, large-format Megapack product turned its first profit that quarter.

"Difficult to predict" performance in the second half of 2020
Tesla withdrew its financial guidance last quarter in light of the upheaval across the global economy. It refrained from setting new guidance now.

“Although we have successfully ramped vehicle production back to prior levels, it remains difficult to predict whether there will be further operational interruptions or how global consumer sentiment will evolve, given risks to the EV boom noted by analysts, in the second half of 2020,” the earnings report notes.

The company asserted it will still deliver 500,000 vehicles this year regardless of externalities, a goal that aligns with broader EV sales momentum in 2024 trends. It already has sufficient production capacity installed to reach that, Tesla said. But with 179,387 cars delivered so far, Tesla faces an uphill climb to ship more cars in the second half.

Wall Street maintained its buoyant confidence in Tesla's share price, despite rising competition in China noted by rivals. It closed at $1,592 before the earnings announcement, rising to $1,661 in after-hours trading.

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