Canada expected to miss its 2035 clean electricity goals

Texas PUC Electricity Market Reforms aim to boost grid reliability, support ERCOT resilience, pay standby generators, require capacity procurement, and mitigate blackout risk, though analysts warn higher consumer bills and winter reserve margin deficits.

Key Points

PUC proposals to bolster ERCOT reliability via standby capacity, capacity procurement, and measures to reduce blackout risk.

✅ Pays generators for standby capacity during grid stress

✅ Requires capacity procurement to meet forecast demand

✅ Could raise consumer bills despite reliability gains

The Public Utility Commission of Texas is discussing major reforms to the state’s electricity market with the purpose to avoid a repeat of the power failures and blackouts during the February 2021 winter storm, which led to the death of more than 100 people and left over 11 million residents without electricity for days.

The regulator is discussing at a meeting on Thursday around a dozen proposals to make the grid more stable and reliable in case of emergencies. Proposals include paying power generators that are on standby when the grid needs backup, and requiring companies to pre-emptively buy capacity to meet future demand.

It is not clear yet how many and which of the proposals for electricity market reforms PUC will endorse today, while Texans vote on funding to modernize electricity generation later this year.

Analysts and consumer protection bodies warn that the measures will raise the energy bills for consumers, as some electricity market bailout ideas shift costs to ratepayers as well.

“Customers will be paying for more, but will they be getting more reliability?” Michael Jewell, an attorney with Jewell & Associates PLLC who represents clients at PUC proceedings, told Bloomberg.

“This is going to take us further down a path that’s going to increase cost to consumers, we better be darn sure these are the right choices,” Tim Morstad, Associate State Director, AARP Texas, told FOX 4 NEWS.

Last month, a report by the North American Electric Reliability Corp warned that the Texas power grid remained vulnerable to blackouts in case of a repeat of this year’s February Freeze.

Beyond Texas, electricity blackout risks have been identified across the U.S., underscoring the stakes for grid planning.

According to the 2021-2022 Winter Reliability Assessment report, Texas risks a 37-percent reserve margin deficit in case of a harsh winter, with ERCOT moving to procure capacity to address winter concerns, NERC said.

A reserve margin is the reserve of power generation capacity comparative to demand. The expected reserve margin for Texas for this winter, according to NERC, is 41.9 percent. Yet if another cold spell hits the state, it would affect this spare capacity, pushing the margin deeply into negative territory.

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Australia Renewable Energy Transition: solar capacity growth, net-zero goals, rising electricity demand, coal reliance, EV adoption, grid decarbonization, heat waves, air conditioning loads, and policy incentives shaping clean power, efficiency, and emissions reduction.

Key Points

Australia targets net-zero by 2050 by scaling renewables, curbing demand, and phasing down coal and gas.

✅ Solar capacity up 200% since 2018, yet coal remains dominant.

✅ Transport leads energy use; EV uptake lags global average.

✅ Heat waves boost AC load, stressing grids and emissions goals.

A more than 200% increase in installed solar power generation capacity since 2018 helped Australia rank sixth globally in terms of solar capacity last year and emerge as one of the world's fastest-growing major renewable energy producers, aligning with forecasts that renewables to surpass coal in global power generation by 2025.

However, to realise its goal of becoming a net-zero carbon emitter by 2050, Australia must reverse the trajectory of its energy use, which remains on a rising path, even as Asia set to use half of electricity underscores regional demand growth, in contrast with several peers that have curbed energy use in recent years.

Australia's total electricity consumption has grown nearly 8% over the past decade, amid a global power demand surge that has exceeded pre-pandemic levels, compared with contractions over the same period of more than 7% in France, Germany and Japan, and a 14% drop in the United Kingdom, data from Ember shows.

Sustained growth in Australia's electricity demand has in turn meant that power producers must continue to heavily rely on coal for electricity generation on top of recent additions in supply of renewable energy sources, with low-emissions generation growth expected to cover most new demand.

Australia has sharply boosted clean energy capacity in recent years, but remains heavily reliant on coal & natural gas for electricity generation
To accomplish emissions reduction targets on time, Australia's energy use must decline while clean energy supplies climb further, as that would give power producers the scope to shut high-polluting fossil-powered energy generation systems ahead of the 2050 deadline.

DEMAND DRIVERS
Reducing overall electricity and energy use is a major challenge in all countries, where China's electricity appetite highlights shifting consumption patterns, but will be especially tough in Australia which is a relative laggard in terms of the electrification of transport systems and is prone to sustained heat waves that trigger heavy use of air conditioners.

The transport sector uses more energy than any other part of the Australian economy, including industry, and accounted for roughly 40% of total final energy use as of 2020, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA.)

Transport energy demand has also expanded more quickly than other sectors, growing by over 5% from 2010 to 2020 compared to industry's 1.3% growth over the same period.

Transport is Australia's main energy use sector, and oil products are the main source of energy type
To reduce energy use, and cut the country's fuel import bill which topped AUD $65 billion in 2022 alone, according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, the Australian government is keen to electrify car fleets and is offering large incentives for electric vehicle purchases.

Even so, electric vehicles accounted for only 5.1% of total Australian car sales in 2022, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA).

That compares to 13% in New Zealand, 21% in the European Union, and a global average of 14%.

More incentives for EV purchases are expected, but any rapid adoption of EVs would only serve to increase overall electricity demand, and with surging electricity demand already straining power systems worldwide, place further pressure on power producers to increase electricity supplies.

Heating and cooling for homes and businesses is another major energy demand driver in Australia, and accounts for roughly 40% of total electricity use in the country.

Australia is exposed to harsh weather conditions, especially heat waves which are expected to increase in frequency, intensity and duration over the coming decades due to climate change, according to the New South Wales government.

To cope, Australians are expected to resort to increased use of air conditioners during the hottest times of the year, and with reduced power reserves flagged by the market operator, adding yet more strain to electricity systems.

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Ontario Pickering Nuclear Closure will shift supply to natural gas, raising emissions as the electricity grid manages nuclear refurbishment, IESO planning, clean power imports, and new wind, solar, and storage to support electrification.

Key Points

Ontario will close Pickering and rely on natural gas, increasing emissions while other nuclear units are refurbished.

✅ 14% of Ontario electricity supplied by Pickering now

✅ Natural gas use rises; grid emissions projected up 375%

✅ IESO warns gas phaseout by 2030 risks blackouts, costs

The Ontario government will not reconsider plans to close the Pickering nuclear station and instead stop-gap the consequent electricity shortfall with natural gas-generated power in a move that will, as an analysis of Ontario's grid shows, hike the province’s greenhouse gas emissions substantially in the coming years.

In a report released this week, a nuclear advocacy group urged Ontario to refurbish the aging facility east of Toronto, which is set to be shuttered in phases in 2024 and 2025, prompting debate over a clean energy plan after Pickering as the closure nears. The closure of Pickering, which provides 14 per cent of the province’s annual electricity supply, comes at the same time as Ontario’s other two nuclear stations are undergoing refurbishment and operating at reduced capacity.

Canadians for Nuclear Energy, which is largely funded by power workers' unions, argued closing the 50-year-old facility will result in job losses, emissions increases, heightened reliance on imported natural gas and an electricity supply gap across Ontario.

But Palmer Lockridge, spokesperson for the provincial energy minister, said further extending Pickering’s lifespan isn’t on the table.

“As previously announced in 2020, our government is supporting Ontario Power Generation’s plan to safely extend the life of the Pickering Nuclear Generating Station through the end of 2025,” said Lockridge in an emailed response to questions.

“Going forward, we are ensuring a reliable, affordable and clean electricity system for decades to come. That’s why we put a plan in place that ensures we are prepared for the emerging energy needs following the closure of Pickering, and as a result of our government’s success in growing and electrifying the province’s economy.”

The Progressive Conservative government under Premier Doug Ford has invested heavily in electrification, sinking billions into electric vehicle and battery manufacturing and industries like steel-making to retool plants to run on electricity rather than coal, and exploring new large-scale nuclear plants to bolster baseload supply.

Natural gas now provides about seven per cent of the province’s energy, a piece of the pie that will rise significantly as nuclear energy dwindles. Emissions from Ontario’s electricity grid, which is currently one of the world’s cleanest with 94 per cent zero-emission power generation, are projected to rise a whopping 375 per cent as the province turns increasingly to natural gas generation. Those increases will effectively undo a third of the hard-won emissions reductions the province achieved by phasing out coal-fired power generation.

The Independent Electricity System Operator (IESO), which manages Ontario’s grid, studied whether the province could phase out natural gas generation by 2030 and concluded that “would result in blackouts and hinder electrification” and increase average residential electricity costs by $100 per month.

The Ontario Clean Air Alliance, however, obtained draft documents from the electricity operator that showed it had studied, but not released publicly, other scenarios that involved phasing out natural gas without energy shortfalls, price hikes or increases in emissions.

The Ontario government will not reconsider plans to close the Pickering nuclear station and instead stop-gap the consequent electricity shortfall facing Ontario with natural gas-generated power in a move that will hike the province’s greenhouse gas emissions.

One model suggested increasing carbon taxes and imports of clean energy from other provinces could keep blackouts, costs and emissions at bay, while another involved increasing energy efficiency, wind generation and storage.

“By banning gas-fired electricity exports to the U.S., importing all the Quebec water power we can with the existing transmission lines and investing in energy efficiency and wind and solar and storage — do all those things and you can phase out gas-fired power and lower our bills,” said Jack Gibbons, chair of the Ontario Clean Air Alliance.

The IESO has argued in response that the study of those scenarios was not complete and did not include many of the challenges associated with phasing out natural gas plants.

Ontario Energy Minister Todd Smith asked the IESO to develop “an achievable pathway to zero-emissions in the electricity sector and evaluate a moratorium on new-build natural gas generation stations,” said his spokesperson. That report, an early look at halting gas power, is expected in November.

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Sustainable Marine tidal energy delivers in-stream power to Nova Scotia's grid from Grand Passage, proving low-impact, renewable generation and advancing a floating tidal array at FORCE and Minas Passage in the Bay of Fundy.

Key Points

The first in-stream tidal project supplying clean power to Nova Scotia's grid, proven at Grand Passage.

✅ First to deliver in-stream tidal power to Canada's grid

✅ Demonstration at Grand Passage informs FORCE deployments

✅ Low-impact design and environmental monitoring validated

Sustainable Marine has officially powered up its tidal energy operation in Canada and is delivering clean electricity to the power system in Nova Scotia, on the country’s Atlantic coast, as the province moves to increase wind and solar projects in the years ahead. The company’s system in Grand Passage is the first to deliver in-stream tidal power to the grid in Canada, following provincial approval to harness Bay of Fundy tides that is spurring further development.

The system start-up is the culmination of more than a decade of research, development and testing, including lessons from Scottish tidal projects in recent years and a powerful tidal turbine feeding onshore grids, managing the technical challenges associated with operating in highly energetic environments and proving the ultra-low environmental impact of the tidal technology.

Sustainable Marine is striving to deliver the world’s first floating tidal array at FORCE (Fundy Ocean Research Centre for Energy). This project will be delivered in phases, drawing upon the knowledge gained and lessons learned in Grand Passage, and insights from offshore wind pilots like France’s first offshore wind turbine in Europe. In the coming months the company will continue to operate the platform at its demonstration site at Grand Passage, gradually building up power production, while New York and New England clean energy demand continues to rise, to further prove the technology and environmental monitoring systems, before commencing deployments in the Minas Passage – renowned as the Everest of tidal energy.

The Bay of Fundy’s huge tidal energy resource contains more than four times the combined flow of every freshwater river in the world, with the potential to generate approximately 2,500 MW of green energy, underscoring why independent electricity planning will be important for integrating marine renewables.

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EU Winter Energy Mix 2022-2023 shows renewables, wind, solar, and hydro overtaking coal and gas, as demand fell amid high prices; Ember and IEA confirm lower emissions across Europe during the energy crisis.

Key Points

It describes Europe's winter power mix: reduced coal and gas, and record wind, solar, and hydro output.

✅ Coal generation fell 11% YoY; gas output declined even more.

✅ Renewables supplied 40%: wind, solar, and hydro outpaced fossil fuels.

✅ Ember and IEA confirm trends; mild winter tempered demand.

The EU burned less coal this winter during the energy crisis than in previous years, according to an analysis, quashing fears that consumption of the most polluting fossil fuel would soar as countries scrambled to find substitutes for lost supplies of Russian gas.

The study from energy think-tank Ember shows that between October 2022 and March 2023 coal generation fell 27 terawatt hours, or almost 11 per cent year on year, while gas generation fell 38 terawatt hours, as renewables crowded out gas and consumers cut electricity consumption in response to soaring prices.

Renewable energy supplies also rose, with combined wind and solar power and hydroelectric output outstripping fossil fuel generation for the first time, providing 40 per cent of all electricity supplies. The Financial Times checked Ember’s findings with the International Energy Agency, which said they broadly matched its own preliminary analysis of Europe’s electricity generation over the winter.

The study demonstrates that fears of a steep rebound in coal usage in Europe’s power mix were overstated, despite the continent’s worst energy crisis in 40 years following Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, even as stunted hydro and nuclear output in parts of Europe posed challenges.

While Russia slashed gas supplies to Europe and succeeded in boosting energy prices for consumers to record levels, the push by governments to rejuvenate old coal plants, including Germany's coal generation, to ensure the lights stayed on ultimately did not lead to increased consumption.

“With Europe successfully on the other side of this winter and major supply disruptions avoided, it is clear the threatened coal comeback did not materialise,” analysts at Ember said in the report.

“With fossil fuel generation down, EU power sector emissions during winter were the lowest they have ever been.”

Ember cautioned, however, that Europe had been assisted by a mild winter that helped cut electricity demand for heating and there was no guarantee of such weather next winter. Companies and households had also endured a lot of pain as a result of the higher prices that had led them to cut consumption, even though in some periods, such as the latest lockdown, power demand held firm in parts of Europe.

Total electricity consumption between October and March declined 94 terawatt hours, or 7 per cent, compared with the same period in winter 2021/22, continuing post-Covid transition dynamics across Europe.

“For a lot of people this winter was really hard with electricity prices that were extraordinarily high and we shouldn’t lose sight of that,” said Ember analyst Harriet Fox.

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Space solar power promises wireless energy from orbital solar satellites via microwave or laser power beaming, using photovoltaics and rectennas. NRL and AFRL advances hint at 24-7 renewable power delivery to Earth and airborne drones.

Key Points

Space solar power beams orbital solar energy to Earth via microwaves or lasers, enabling continuous wireless electricity.

✅ Harvests sunlight in orbit and transmits via microwaves or lasers

✅ Provides 24-7 renewable power, independent of weather or night

✅ Enables wireless power for remote sites, grids, and drones

Earlier this year, a small group of spectators gathered in David Taylor Model Basin, the Navy’s cavernous indoor wave pool in Maryland, to watch something they couldn’t see. At each end of the facility there was a 13-foot pole with a small cube perched on top. A powerful infrared laser beam shot out of one of the cubes, striking an array of photovoltaic cells inside the opposite cube. To the naked eye, however, it looked like a whole lot of nothing. The only evidence that anything was happening came from a small coffee maker nearby, which was churning out “laser lattes” using only the power generated by the system as ambitions for cheap abundant electricity gain momentum worldwide.

The laser setup managed to transmit 400 watts of power—enough for several small household appliances—through hundreds of meters of air without moving any mass. The Naval Research Lab, which ran the project, hopes to use the system to send power to drones during flight. But NRL electronics engineer Paul Jaffe has his sights set on an even more ambitious problem: beaming solar power to Earth from space. For decades the idea had been reserved for The Future, but a series of technological breakthroughs and a massive new government research program suggest that faraway day may have finally arrived as interest in space-based solar broadens across industry and government.

Since the idea for space solar power first cropped up in Isaac Asimov’s science fiction in the early 1940s, scientists and engineers have floated dozens of proposals to bring the concept to life, including inflatable solar arrays and robotic self-assembly. But the basic idea is always the same: A giant satellite in orbit harvests energy from the sun and converts it to microwaves or lasers for transmission to Earth, where it is converted into electricity. The sun never sets in space, so a space solar power system could supply renewable power to anywhere on the planet, day or night, as recent tests show we can generate electricity from the night sky as well, rain or shine.

Like fusion energy, space-based solar power seemed doomed to become a technology that was always 30 years away. Technical problems kept cropping up, cost estimates remained stratospheric, and as solar cells became cheaper and more efficient, and storage improved with cheap batteries, the case for space-based solar seemed to be shrinking.

That didn’t stop government research agencies from trying. In 1975, after partnering with the Department of Energy on a series of space solar power feasibility studies, NASA beamed 30 kilowatts of power over a mile using a giant microwave dish. Beamed energy is a crucial aspect of space solar power, but this test remains the most powerful demonstration of the technology to date. “The fact that it’s been almost 45 years since NASA’s demonstration, and it remains the high-water mark, speaks for itself,” Jaffe says. “Space solar wasn’t a national imperative, and so a lot of this technology didn’t meaningfully progress.”

John Mankins, a former physicist at NASA and director of Solar Space Technologies, witnessed how government bureaucracy killed space solar power development firsthand. In the late 1990s, Mankins authored a report for NASA that concluded it was again time to take space solar power seriously and led a project to do design studies on a satellite system. Despite some promising results, the agency ended up abandoning it.

In 2005, Mankins left NASA to work as a consultant, but he couldn’t shake the idea of space solar power. He did some modest space solar power experiments himself and even got a grant from NASA’s Innovative Advanced Concepts program in 2011. The result was SPS-ALPHA, which Mankins called “the first practical solar power satellite.” The idea, says Mankins, was “to build a large solar-powered satellite out of thousands of small pieces.” His modular design brought the cost of hardware down significantly, at least in principle.

Jaffe, who was just starting to work on hardware for space solar power at the Naval Research Lab, got excited about Mankins’ concept. At the time he was developing a “sandwich module” consisting of a small solar panel on one side and a microwave transmitter on the other. His electronic sandwich demonstrated all the elements of an actual space solar power system and, perhaps most important, it was modular. It could work beautifully with something like Mankins' concept, he figured. All they were missing was the financial support to bring the idea from the laboratory into space.

Jaffe invited Mankins to join a small team of researchers entering a Defense Department competition, in which they were planning to pitch a space solar power concept based on SPS-ALPHA. In 2016, the team presented the idea to top Defense officials and ended up winning four out of the seven award categories. Both Jaffe and Mankins described it as a crucial moment for reviving the US government’s interest in space solar power.

They might be right. In October, the Air Force Research Lab announced a $100 million program to develop hardware for a solar power satellite. It’s an important first step toward the first demonstration of space solar power in orbit, and Mankins says it could help solve what he sees as space solar power’s biggest problem: public perception. The technology has always seemed like a pie-in-the-sky idea, and the cost of setting up a solar array on Earth is plummeting, as proposals like a tenfold U.S. solar expansion signal rapid growth; but space solar power has unique benefits, chief among them the availability of solar energy around the clock regardless of the weather or time of day.

It can also provide renewable energy to remote locations, such as forward operating bases for the military, which has deployed its first floating solar array to bolster resilience. And at a time when wildfires have forced the utility PG&E to kill power for thousands of California residents on multiple occasions, having a way to provide renewable energy through the clouds and smoke doesn’t seem like such a bad idea. (Ironically enough, PG&E entered a first-of-its-kind agreement to buy space solar power from a company called Solaren back in 2009; the system was supposed to start operating in 2016 but never came to fruition.)

“If space solar power does work, it is hard to overstate what the geopolitical implications would be,” Jaffe says. “With GPS, we sort of take it for granted that no matter where we are on this planet, we can get precise navigation information. If the same thing could be done for energy, especially as peer-to-peer energy sharing matures, it would be revolutionary.”

Indeed, there seems to be an emerging race to become the first to harness this technology. Earlier this year China announced its intention to become the first country to build a solar power station in space, and for more than a decade Japan has considered the development of a space solar power station to be a national priority. Now that the US military has joined in with a $100 million hardware development program, it may only be a matter of time before there’s a solar farm in the solar system.

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