It could take $1.5 billion and four years to install anti-pollution equipment on all of OntarioÂ’s coal-fired electricity stations but it wouldnÂ’t make economic sense if the plants are closed by 2014 as planned, Ontario Power Generation CEO Jim Hankinson said recently.
The giant utility already has scrubbers on two of four coal-burning units at its Lambton station and on two of eight units at the huge Nanticoke generating station — considered one of the worst sources of air pollution in North America.
The Liberal government was reluctant to install scrubbers when it originally promised in 2003 to close OntarioÂ’s four remaining coal-fired stations by 2007, and even later when it pushed that deadline back to at least 2011.
The Ontario Power Authority has recommended the government keep the coal plants around on standby until 2014 before they can be permanently mothballed.
“Well, if you assume that they close down in 2014 as the legislation calls for, obviously the payback would not be very good from an economic point of view,”Hankinson said after appearing before a legislative committee.
Hankinson admitted “emissions could be reduced very substantially” if the anti-pollution equipment was installed at the coal-burning plants but added that OPG makes a habit of using the worst polluting equipment as a last resort.
“Obviously we would run the units that have the (anti-pollution) equipment on them first and only in those circumstances where there’s need would we run the other ones.”
NDP Leader Howard Hampton agreed scrubbers would be a waste of money and said the province should spend its cash on incentive programs for consumers to lower demand for electricity.
The coal plants were used less often last year because of OntarioÂ’s mild weather and Hampton said they would be used even less in the future if homes and businesses were given help to become more energy efficient.
“Instead of spending billions of dollars on scrubbers we should have an incentive strategy for homeowners, for shop owners, for school boards and for industry to start retrofitting their operations so we actually provide the financial incentive to use less electricity,” said Hampton.
“We’re better off to spend $1.5 billion to provide those kind of incentives... than to put money on scrubbers that may only be used for, say, 10 years.”
The watchdog group Energy Probe said Ontario should be exploring the latest technologies to burn so-called clean coal to reduce emissions from the electricity plants.
“The technology for coal-fired utilization is making some rapid progress with intense public and industrial support in many parts of the world (including) the United States, Europe and Japan,” said executive director Tom Adams.
“We can now with existing, off-the-shelf technology, virtually eliminate conventional pollutants from coal-fired generation.”
A spokesman for Energy Minister Dwight Duncan said the government compares the installation of scrubbers on coal stacks to “putting filters on cigarettes,” and said clean-coal technology is not ready yet.
“Reports from around the globe indicate so-called clean-coal technology — if it is proven able to fully capture CO2 emissions — wouldn’t be commercially viable until very late into the next decade,” said Duncan’s communications advisor, Steve Erwin.
Alberta Electricity Rate Cap stays despite carbon tax repeal, keeping the Regulated Rate Option at 6.8 cents/kWh. Levy funds cover market gaps as the UCP reviews NDP policies to maintain affordable utility bills.
Key Points
Program capping RRO power at 6.8 cents/kWh, using levy funds to offset market prices while the UCP reviews policy.
✅ RRO cap fixed at 6.8 cents/kWh for eligible customers
✅ Levy funds pay generators when market prices exceed the cap
✅ UCP reviewing NDP policies to ensure affordable rates
Alberta's carbon tax has been cancelled, but a consumer price cap on electricity — which the levy pays for — is staying in place for now.
June electricity rates are due out on Monday, about four days after the new UCP government did away with the carbon charge on natural gas and vehicle fuel.
Part of the levy's revenue was earmarked by the previous NDP government to keep power prices at or below 6.8 cents per kilowatt hour under new electricity rules set by the province.
"The Regulated Rate Option cap of 6.8 cents/kWh was implemented by the previous government and currently remains in effect. We are reviewing all policies put in place by the former government and will make decisions that ensure more affordable electricity rates for job-creators and Albertans," said a spokesperson for Alberta's energy ministry in an emailed statement.
Albertans with regulated rate contracts and all City of Medicine Hat utility customers only pay that amount or less, though some Alberta ratepayers have faced deferral-related arrears.
If the actual market price rises above that, the difference is paid to generators directly from levy funds, a buffer that matters as experts warn prices are set to soar later this year.
The government has paid more than $55 million to utilities over the past year ending in March 2019, due to that electricity price cap being in place.
Alberta Energy says the price gap program will continue, at least for the time being, amid electricity policy changes being considered.
California clean electricity accelerates with renewables as solar and wind surge, battery storage strengthens grid resilience, natural gas declines, and coal fades, advancing SB 100 targets, carbon neutrality goals, and affordable, reliable power statewide.
Key Points
California clean electricity is the state's transition to renewable, zero-carbon power, scaling solar, wind and storage.
✅ Solar generation up nearly 20x since 2012
✅ Natural gas power down 20%; coal nearly phased out
✅ Battery storage shifts daytime surplus to evening demand
Data from the California Energy Commission (CEC) highlight California’s continued progress toward building a more resilient grid, achieving 100 percent clean electricity and meeting the state’s carbon neutrality goals.
Analysis of the state’s Total System Electric Generation report shows how California’s power mix has changed over the last decade. Since 2012:
Solar generation increased nearly twentyfold from 2,609 gigawatt-hours (GWh) to 48,950 GWh.
In addition to total utility generation, rooftop solar increased by 10 times generating 24,309 GWh of clean power in 2022. The state’s expanding fleet of battery storage resources also help support the grid by charging during the day using excess renewable power for use in the evening.
“This latest report card showing how solar energy boomed as natural gas powered electricity experienced a steady 20 percent decline over the last decade is encouraging,” said CEC Vice Chair Siva Gunda. “Even as climate impacts become increasingly severe, California remains committed to transitioning away from polluting fossil fuels and delivering on the promise to build a future power grid that is clean, reliable and affordable.”
Senate Bill 100 (2018) requires 100 percent of California’s electric retail sales be supplied by renewable and zero-carbon energy sources by 2045. To keep the state on track, last year Governor Gavin Newsom signed SB 1020, establishing interim targets of 90 percent clean electricity by 2035 and 95 percent by 2040.
The state monitors progress through the Renewables Portfolio Standard (RPS), which tracks the power mix of retail sales, and regional peers such as Nevada's RPS progress offer useful comparison. The latest data show that in 2021 more than 37 percent of the state’s electricity came from RPS-eligible sources such as solar and wind, an increase of 2.7 percent compared to 2020. When combined with other sources of zero-carbon energy such as large hydroelectric generation and nuclear, nearly 59 percent of the state’s retail electricity sales came from nonfossil fuel sources.
The total system electric generation report is based on electric generation from all in-state power plants rated 1 megawatt (MW) or larger and imported utility-scale power generation. It reflects the percentage of a specific resource compared to all power generation, not just retail sales. The total system electric generation report accounts for energy used for water conveyance and pumping, transmission and distribution losses and other uses not captured under RPS.
ITER Nuclear Fusion advances tokamak magnetic confinement, heating deuterium-tritium plasma with superconducting magnets, targeting net energy gain, tritium breeding, and steam-turbine power, while complementing laser inertial confinement milestones for grid-scale electricity and 2025 startup goals.
Key Points
ITER Nuclear Fusion is a tokamak project confining D-T plasma with magnets to achieve net energy gain and clean power.
✅ Tokamak magnetic confinement with high-temp superconducting coils
✅ Deuterium-tritium fuel cycle with on-site tritium breeding
✅ Targets net energy gain and grid-scale, low-carbon electricity
It sounds like the stuff of dreams: a virtually limitless source of energy that doesn’t produce greenhouse gases or radioactive waste. That’s the promise of nuclear fusion, often described as the holy grail of clean energy by proponents, which for decades has been nothing more than a fantasy due to insurmountable technical challenges. But things are heating up in what has turned into a race to create what amounts to an artificial sun here on Earth, one that can provide power for our kettles, cars and light bulbs.
Today’s nuclear power plants create electricity through nuclear fission, in which atoms are split, with next-gen nuclear power exploring smaller, cheaper, safer designs that remain distinct from fusion. Nuclear fusion however, involves combining atomic nuclei to release energy. It’s the same reaction that’s taking place at the Sun’s core. But overcoming the natural repulsion between atomic nuclei and maintaining the right conditions for fusion to occur isn’t straightforward. And doing so in a way that produces more energy than the reaction consumes has been beyond the grasp of the finest minds in physics for decades.
But perhaps not for much longer. Some major technical challenges have been overcome in the past few years and governments around the world have been pouring money into fusion power research as part of a broader green industrial revolution under way in several regions. There are also over 20 private ventures in the UK, US, Europe, China and Australia vying to be the first to make fusion energy production a reality.
“People are saying, ‘If it really is the ultimate solution, let’s find out whether it works or not,’” says Dr Tim Luce, head of science and operation at the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER), being built in southeast France. ITER is the biggest throw of the fusion dice yet.
Its $22bn (£15.9bn) build cost is being met by the governments of two-thirds of the world’s population, including the EU, the US, China and Russia, at a time when Europe is losing nuclear power and needs energy, and when it’s fired up in 2025 it’ll be the world’s largest fusion reactor. If it works, ITER will transform fusion power from being the stuff of dreams into a viable energy source.
Constructing a nuclear fusion reactor ITER will be a tokamak reactor – thought to be the best hope for fusion power. Inside a tokamak, a gas, often a hydrogen isotope called deuterium, is subjected to intense heat and pressure, forcing electrons out of the atoms. This creates a plasma – a superheated, ionised gas – that has to be contained by intense magnetic fields.
The containment is vital, as no material on Earth could withstand the intense heat (100,000,000°C and above) that the plasma has to reach so that fusion can begin. It’s close to 10 times the heat at the Sun’s core, and temperatures like that are needed in a tokamak because the gravitational pressure within the Sun can’t be recreated.
When atomic nuclei do start to fuse, vast amounts of energy are released. While the experimental reactors currently in operation release that energy as heat, in a fusion reactor power plant, the heat would be used to produce steam that would drive turbines to generate electricity, even as some envision nuclear beyond electricity for industrial heat and fuels.
Tokamaks aren’t the only fusion reactors being tried. Another type of reactor uses lasers to heat and compress a hydrogen fuel to initiate fusion. In August 2021, one such device at the National Ignition Facility, at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California, generated 1.35 megajoules of energy. This record-breaking figure brings fusion power a step closer to net energy gain, but most hopes are still pinned on tokamak reactors rather than lasers.
In June 2021, China’s Experimental Advanced Superconducting Tokamak (EAST) reactor maintained a plasma for 101 seconds at 120,000,000°C. Before that, the record was 20 seconds. Ultimately, a fusion reactor would need to sustain the plasma indefinitely – or at least for eight-hour ‘pulses’ during periods of peak electricity demand.
A real game-changer for tokamaks has been the magnets used to produce the magnetic field. “We know how to make magnets that generate a very high magnetic field from copper or other kinds of metal, but you would pay a fortune for the electricity. It wouldn’t be a net energy gain from the plant,” says Luce.
One route for nuclear fusion is to use atoms of deuterium and tritium, both isotopes of hydrogen. They fuse under incredible heat and pressure, and the resulting products release energy as heat
The solution is to use high-temperature, superconducting magnets made from superconducting wire, or ‘tape’, that has no electrical resistance. These magnets can create intense magnetic fields and don’t lose energy as heat.
“High temperature superconductivity has been known about for 35 years. But the manufacturing capability to make tape in the lengths that would be required to make a reasonable fusion coil has just recently been developed,” says Luce. One of ITER’s magnets, the central solenoid, will produce a field of 13 tesla – 280,000 times Earth’s magnetic field.
The inner walls of ITER’s vacuum vessel, where the fusion will occur, will be lined with beryllium, a metal that won’t contaminate the plasma much if they touch. At the bottom is the divertor that will keep the temperature inside the reactor under control.
“The heat load on the divertor can be as large as in a rocket nozzle,” says Luce. “Rocket nozzles work because you can get into orbit within minutes and in space it’s really cold.” In a fusion reactor, a divertor would need to withstand this heat indefinitely and at ITER they’ll be testing one made out of tungsten.
Meanwhile, in the US, the National Spherical Torus Experiment – Upgrade (NSTX-U) fusion reactor will be fired up in the autumn of 2022, while efforts in advanced fission such as a mini-reactor design are also progressing. One of its priorities will be to see whether lining the reactor with lithium helps to keep the plasma stable.
Choosing a fuel Instead of just using deuterium as the fusion fuel, ITER will use deuterium mixed with tritium, another hydrogen isotope. The deuterium-tritium blend offers the best chance of getting significantly more power out than is put in. Proponents of fusion power say one reason the technology is safe is that the fuel needs to be constantly fed into the reactor to keep fusion happening, making a runaway reaction impossible.
Deuterium can be extracted from seawater, so there’s a virtually limitless supply of it. But only 20kg of tritium are thought to exist worldwide, so fusion power plants will have to produce it (ITER will develop technology to ‘breed’ tritium). While some radioactive waste will be produced in a fusion plant, it’ll have a lifetime of around 100 years, rather than the thousands of years from fission.
At the time of writing in September, researchers at the Joint European Torus (JET) fusion reactor in Oxfordshire were due to start their deuterium-tritium fusion reactions. “JET will help ITER prepare a choice of machine parameters to optimise the fusion power,” says Dr Joelle Mailloux, one of the scientific programme leaders at JET. These parameters will include finding the best combination of deuterium and tritium, and establishing how the current is increased in the magnets before fusion starts.
The groundwork laid down at JET should accelerate ITER’s efforts to accomplish net energy gain. ITER will produce ‘first plasma’ in December 2025 and be cranked up to full power over the following decade. Its plasma temperature will reach 150,000,000°C and its target is to produce 500 megawatts of fusion power for every 50 megawatts of input heating power.
“If ITER is successful, it’ll eliminate most, if not all, doubts about the science and liberate money for technology development,” says Luce. That technology development will be demonstration fusion power plants that actually produce electricity, where advanced reactors can build on decades of expertise. “ITER is opening the door and saying, yeah, this works – the science is there.”
Trump NEPA Overhaul streamlines environmental reviews, tightening 'reasonably foreseeable' effects, curbing cumulative impacts, codifying CEQ greenhouse gas guidance, expediting permits for pipelines, highways, and wind projects with two-year EIS limits and one lead agency.
✅ Limits cumulative and indirect impacts; emphasizes foreseeable effects
✅ Caps EIS at two years; one-year environmental assessments
✅ One lead agency; narrower NEPA triggers for low federal funding
President Trump has announced plans for overhauling rules surrounding the nation’s bedrock environmental law, and administration officials refuted claims they were downplaying greenhouse gas emissions, as the administration also pursues replacement power plant rules in related areas.
The president, during remarks at the White House with supporters and Cabinet officials, said he wanted to fix the nation’s “regulatory nightmare” through new guidelines for implementing the National Environmental Policy Act.
“America is a nation of builders,” he said. But it takes too long to get a permit, and that’s “big government at its absolute worst.”
The president said, “We’re maintaining America’s world-class standards of environmental protection.” He added, “We’re going to have very strong regulation, but it’s going to go very quickly.”
NEPA says the federal government must consider alternatives to major projects like oil pipelines, highways and bridges that could inflict environmental harm. The law also gives communities input.
The Council on Environmental Quality has not updated the implementing rules in decades, and both energy companies and environmentalists want them reworked, even as some industry groups warned against rushing electricity pricing changes under related policy debates.
But they patently disagree on how to change the rules.
A central fight surrounds whether the government considers climate change concerns when analyzing a project.
Environmentalists want agencies to look more at “cumulative” or “indirect” impacts of projects. The Trump plan shuts the door on that.
“Analysis of cumulative effects is not required,” the plan states, adding that CEQ “proposes to make amendments to simplify the definition of effects by consolidating the definition into a single paragraph.”
CEQ Chairwoman Mary Neumayr told reporters during a conference call that definitions in the current rules were the “subject of confusion.”
The proposed changes, she said, do in fact eliminate the terms “cumulative” and “indirect,” in favor of more simplified language.
Effects must be “reasonably foreseeable” and require a “reasonably close causal relationship” to the proposed action, she added. “It does not exclude considerations of greenhouse gas emissions,” she said, pointing to parallel EPA proposals for new pollution limits on coal and gas power plants as context.
Last summer, CEQ issued proposed guidance on greenhouse gas reviews in project permitting. The nonbinding document gave agencies broad authority when considering emissions (Greenwire, June 21, 2019).
Environmentalists scoffed and said the proposed guidance failed to incorporate the latest climate science and look at how projects could be more resilient in the face of severe weather and sea-level rise.
The proposed NEPA rules released today include provisions to codify the proposed guidance, which has also been years in the making.
Other provisions
Senior administration officials sought to downplay the effect of the proposed NEPA rules by noting the underlying statute will remain the same.
“If it required NEPA yesterday, it will require NEPA under the new proposal,” an official said when asked how the changes might apply to pipelines like Keystone XL.
And yet the proposed changes could alter the “threshold consideration” that triggers NEPA review. The proposal would exclude projects with minimal federal funding or “participation.”
The Trump plan also proposes restricting an environmental impact statement to two years and an environmental assessment to one.
Neumayr said the average EIS takes 4 ½ years and in some cases longer. Democrats have disputed those timelines. Further, just 1% of all federal actions require an EIS, they argue.
The proposal would also require one agency to take the lead on permitting and require agency officials to “timely resolve disputes that may result in delays.”
In general, the plan calls for environmental documents to be “concise” and “serve their purpose of informing decision makers.”
Both Interior Secretary David Bernhardt and EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler, whose agency moved to rewrite coal power plant wastewater limits in separate actions, were at the White House for the announcement.
Reaction
An onslaught of critics have said changes to NEPA rules could be the administration’s most far-reaching environmental rollback, and state attorneys general have mounted a legal challenge to related energy actions as well.
The League of Conservation Voters declared the administration was again trying to “sell out the health and well-being of our children and families to corporate polluters.”
On Capitol Hill, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said during a news conference the administration would “no longer enforce NEPA.”
“This means more polluters will be right there, next to the water supply of our children,” she said. “That’s a public health issue. Their denial of climate, they are going to not use the climate issue as anything to do with environmental decisionmaking.”
Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) echoed the sentiment, saying he didn’t need any more proof that the fossil fuel industry had hardwired the Trump administration “but we got it anyway.”
Energy companies, including firms focused on renewable energy development, are welcoming the “clarity” of the proposed NEPA rules, even as debates continue over a clean electricity standard in federal climate policy.
“The lack of clarity in the existing NEPA regulations has led courts to fill the gaps, spurring costly litigation across the sector, and has led to unclear expectations, which has caused significant and unnecessary delays for infrastructure projects across the country,” the Interstate Natural Gas Association of America said in a statement.
Last night, the American Wind Energy Association said NEPA rules have caused “unreasonable and unnecessary costs and long project delays” for land-based and offshore wind energy and transmission development.
Trump has famously attacked the wind energy industry for decades, dating back to his opposition to a Scottish wind turbine near his golf course.
The president today said he won’t stop until “gleaming new infrastructure has made America the envy of the world again.”
When asked whether he thought climate change was a “hoax,” as he once tweeted, he said no. “Nothing’s a hoax about that,” he said.
The president said there’s a book about climate he’s planning to read. He said, “It’s a very serious subject.”
EU Energy Price Surge is driving up electricity and gas costs, inflation, and cost of living across the EU, prompting tax cuts, price caps, subsidies, and household support measures in France, Italy, Spain, and Germany.
Key Points
A surge in EU gas and electricity costs driving inflation and prompting government subsidies, tax cuts, and price caps.
✅ Low-income EU households now spend 50-70 percent more on energy.
✅ Governments deploy tax cuts, price caps, and direct subsidies.
✅ Gas-dependent power markets drive electricity price spikes.
Higher energy prices, including for natural gas, are pushing up electricity prices and the cost of living for households across the EU, prompting governments to cut taxes and provide financial support to the tune of several billion euros.
A series of reports published by Cambridge Econometrics in October and November 2022 found that households in EU countries are spending much more on energy than in 2020 and that governments are spending billions of euros to help consumers pay bills and cut taxes.
In France, for example, the poorest households now spend roughly one-third more on energy than in 2020. Between August 2020 and August 2022, household energy prices increased by 37 percent, while overall inflation increased by 9.2 percent.
“We estimate that the increase in household energy prices make an average French household €410 worse off in 2022 compared to 2020, mostly due to higher gas prices,” said the report.
In response to rising energy prices, the French government has adopted price caps and support measures forecast to cost over €71 billion, equivalent to 2.9 percent of French GDP, according to the U.K.-based consultancy.
In Italy, fossil fuels alone were responsible for roughly 30 percent of the country’s annual rate of inflation during spring 2022, according to Cambridge Econometrics. Unlike in other European countries, retail electricity prices have outpaced other energy prices in Italy and were 112 percent higher in July 2022 than in August 2020, the report found. Over the same time period, retail petrol prices were up 14 percent, diesel up 22 percent, and natural gas up 42 percent.
We estimate that households in the lowest-income quintile now spend about 50 percent more on energy than in 2020.
“We estimate that before government support, an average Italian household will be spending around €1,400 more on energy and fuel bills this year than in 2020,” the report said. “Low-income households are worse affected by the increasing energy prices: we estimate that households in the lowest-income quintile now spend about 50 percent more on energy than in 2020.”
Electricity production in Italy is dominated by natural gas, which has also led to a spike in wholesale electricity prices. In 2010, natural gas accounted for 50 percent of all electricity production. The share of natural gas fell to 33 percent in 2014, but then rose again, reaching 48 percent in 2021, and 56 percent in the first half of 2022, according to the report, as gas filled the gap of record low hydro power production in 2022.
In Spain, where electricity prices have seen extreme spikes, low-income households are now spending an estimated 70% more on energy than in 2020, according to Cambridge Econometrics.
Low-income squeeze In Spain, low-income households are now spending an estimated 70% more on energy than in 2020, according to Cambridge Econometrics. It noted that the Spanish government has intervened heavily in energy markets by cutting taxes, introducing cash transfers for households, and capping the price of natural gas for power generators. The latter has led to lower electricity prices than in many other EU countries.
These support measures are forecast to cost the Spanish government over €35 billion, equivalent to nearly 3 percent of Spain’s GDP. Yet consumers will still feel the burden of higher costs of living, and rolling back electricity prices may prove difficult in the near term.
In March, electricity prices alone were responsible for 45 percent of year-on-year inflation in Spain but prices have since fallen as a result of government intervention, Cambridge Econometrics said. Between May and July, fossil fuels prices accounted for 19-25 percent of the overall inflation rate, and electricity prices for 16 percent.
Support measures Rising inflation is also a real challenge in Germany, Europe’s largest economy, where German power prices have surged this year, adding pressure. Also there, higher gas prices are to blame.
“We estimate that the increase in energy prices currently make an average household €735 worse off in 2022 compared to 2020, mostly due to higher gas prices,” Cambridge Econometrics said, in a report focused on Germany.
The German government has introduced a number of support measures in order to help households, businesses and industry to pay energy bills, amid rising heating and electricity costs for consumers, including price caps that are expected to take effect in March next year. Moreover, households’ energy bills for December this year will be paid by the state. According to the report, these interventions will mitigate the impact of higher prices “to some extent”, but the aid measures are forecast to cost the government nearly 5 percent of GDP.
Fossil-fuel effect In addition to gas, higher coal prices have also pushed up inflation in some countries, and U.S. electricity prices have reached multi-decade highs as inflation endures.
In Poland, which is heavily dependent on coal for electricity generation, fossil fuels accounted for roughly 40 percent of Poland’s overall year-on-year inflation rate in June 2022, which stood at over 14 percent, the consultancy said.
The price of household coal, which is widely used in heating Polish homes, increased by 157 percent between August 2021 and August 2022.
Higher energy prices in Poland are partly due to Polish and EU sanctions against Russian gas and coal. Other drivers are the weakening of the Polish zloty against the U.S. dollar and the euro, and the uptick in global demand after COVID-19 lockdowns, said Cambridge Econometrics.
Electricity prices have risen at a much slower pace than energy for transport and heating, with an annualized increase of 5.1 percent.
Ireland electricity support measures include PSO levy rebates, RESS 2 renewables, CRU-directed EirGrid backup capacity, and grid investment for the Celtic Interconnector, cutting bills, boosting security of supply, and reducing reliance on imported fossil fuels.
Key Points
Government steps to cut bills and secure supply via PSO rebates, RESS 2 renewables, backup power, and grid upgrades.
✅ PSO levy rebates lower domestic electricity bills.
✅ RESS 2 adds wind, solar, and hydro to the grid.
✅ EirGrid to procure temporary backup capacity for winter peaks.
Ireland's Cabinet has approved a package of measures to help mitigate the rising cost of rising electricity bills, as Irish provider price increases continue to pressure consumers, and to ensure secure supplies to electricity for households and business across Ireland over the coming years.
The package of measures includes changes to the Public Service Obligation (PSO) levy (beyond those announced earlier in the year), which align with emerging EU plans for more fixed-price electricity contracts to improve price stability. The changes will result in rebates, and thus savings, for domestic electricity bills over the course of the next PSO year beginning in October. This further reduction in the PSO levy occurs because of a fall in the relative cost of renewable energy, compared to fossil fuel generation.
The Government has also approved the final results of the second onshore Renewable Electricity Support Scheme (RESS 2) auction, echoing how Ontario's electricity auctions have aimed to lower costs for consumers. This will bring significantly more indigenous wind, solar and hydro-electric energy onto the National Grid. This, in turn, will reduce our reliance on increasingly expensive imported fossil fuels, as the UK explores ending the gas-electricity price link to curb bills.
The package also includes Government approval for the provision of funding for back-up generation capacity, to address risks to security of electricity supply over the coming winters, similar to the UK's forthcoming energy security law approach in this area. The Commission for the Regulation of Utilities (CRU), which has statutory responsibility for security of supply, has directed EirGrid to procure additional temporary emergency generation capacity (for the winters of 2023/2024 to 2025/2026). This will ultimately provide flexible and temporary back-up capacity, to safeguard secure supplies of electricity for households and businesses as we deploy longer-term generation capacity.
Today’s measures also see an increased borrowing limit (€3 billion) for EirGrid – to strengthen our National Grid as part of 'Shaping Our Electricity Future' and to deliver the Celtic (Ireland-France) Interconnector, amid wider European moves to revamp the electricity market that could enhance cross-border resilience. An increased borrowing limit (€650 million) for Bord na Móna will drive greater deployment of indigenous renewable energy across the Midlands and beyond – as part of its 'Brown to Green' strategy, while measures like the UK's household energy price cap illustrate the scale of consumer support elsewhere.
