Chrysler LLC is planning to launch all-electric vehicles in the next three to five years, the latest automaker to join the race to produce cars with fuel-saving technologies.
Chrysler's new Envi unit, which was created last September, is developing vehicles that are intended to run on battery power alone for about 40 miles, Chrysler spokesman Nick Cappa said.
"The group is looking to have a product available in the marketplace in the next three to five years," Cappa said.
Chrysler, which has lagged rivals in its hybrid strategy, is working on a new generation of hybrid vehicles with lithium-ion batteries that are lighter and store more energy than the nickel-metal hydride batteries now in wide use.
Chrysler has not yet announced any partnership for the project or for the development of the batteries.
General Motors Corp and Toyota Motor Corp are racing to develop rechargeable hybrid vehicles using lithium-ion batteries.
GM's all-electric Chevy Volt is scheduled to go into production in 2010 while Toyota has said it will be testing a rechargeable version of its Prius hybrid with fleet customers around the same time.
Ford, which is building 20 plug-in hybrid SUVs on a demonstration basis, has said it expects to have a mass-market car in five to ten years.
Lithium ion batteries are widely used in consumer electronics but automakers have faced a range of issues, including cost and the risk of overheating, in adapting them for use in powering cars.
Chrysler, bought by private equity group Cerberus Capital Management last August, showed three "green" concept cars in January during the Detroit auto show that featured electric motors intended to be powered by lithium-ion batteries - Chrysler's ecoVoyager, Dodge ZEO and Jeep Renegade.
"Chrysler will produce technology similar to one of them or a combination of the three," Cappa said.
Chrysler's move comes as it is reeling financially from sinking sales of large SUVs and pickup trucks as domestic gasoline prices top $4 a gallon.
The Auburn Hills, Michigan-based automaker relies on sales of trucks and SUVs, such as the Dodge Durango SUV and RAM pickup truck, for almost 70 percent of its total sales at a time when U.S. consumers are increasingly demanding lighter and more fuel-efficient vehicles.
The rising popularity of gas-sipping hybrids is prompting automakers to invest in the development of hybrids and electric vehicles.
Toyota dominates the U.S. market for hybrid sales on the strength of the success of its Prius and expects to be selling over 1 million hybrid vehicles annually by early next decade.
Wind Turbine Cancer Claim debunked: Iowa Republican senators back wind energy as fact-checks and DOE research find no link between turbine noise and cancer, limited effects on property values, and manageable wildlife impacts.
Key Points
Claims that turbine noise causes cancer, dismissed by studies and officials as unsupported by evidence.
✅ Grassley and Ernst call the claim idiotic and ridiculous
✅ DOE studies find no cancer link; property impacts limited
President Donald Trump may not be a fan of wind turbines, as shown by his pledge to scrap offshore wind projects earlier, suggesting that the noise they produce may cause cancer, but Iowa's Republican senators are big fans of wind energy.
Sen. Chuck Grassley called Trump's cancer claim "idiotic." On Thursday, Sen. Joni Ernst called the statement "ridiculous."
"I would say it's ridiculous. It's ridiculous," Ernst said, according to WHO-TV.
She likened the claim that wind turbine noise causes cancer to the idea that church bells do the same.
"I have church bells that ring all the time across from my office here in D.C. and I know that noise doesn't give me cancer, otherwise I'd have 'church bell cancer,'" Ernst said, adding that she is "thrilled" to have wind energy generation in Iowa, which aligns with a quarter-million wind jobs forecast nationwide. "I don't know what the president is drawing from."
Trump has a history of degrading wind energy and wind turbines that dates back long before his Tuesday claim that turbines harm property values and cause cancer, and often overlooks Texas grid constraints that can force turbines offline at times.
Not only are wind farms disgusting looking, but even worse they are bad for people's health.
"Not only are wind farms disgusting looking, but even worse, they are bad for people's health," Trump tweeted back in 2012.
Repeated fact-checks have found no scientific evidence to support the claim that wind turbines and the noise they make can cause cancer. The White House has reportedly provided no evidence to support Trump's cancer claim when asked this week
"It just seems like every time you turn around there's another thing the president is saying -- wind power causes cancer, I associate myself with the remarks of Chairman Grassley -- it's an 'idiotic' statement," Pelosi said in her weekly news conference on Thursday.
The president made his latest claim about wind turbines in a speech on Tuesday at a Republican spring dinner, as the industry continued recovering from the COVID-19 crisis that hit solar and wind energy.
"If you have a windmill anywhere near your house, congratulations, your house just went down 75 percent in value -- and they say the noise causes cancer," Trump said Tuesday, swinging his arm in a circle and making a cranking sound to imitate the noise of windmill blades. "And of course it's like a graveyard for birds. If you love birds, you never want to walk under a windmill. It’s a sad, sad sight."
Wind turbines are not, in fact, proven to have widespread negative impacts on property values, according to the Department of Energy's Office of Scientific and Technical Information in the largest study done so far in the U.S., even as some warn that a solar ITC extension could be devastating for the wind market, and there is no peer-reviewed data to back up the claim that the noise causes cancer.
I am considered a world-class expert in tourism. When you say, 'Where is the expert and where is the evidence?' I say: I am the evidence.
It's true wildlife is affected by wind turbines -- particularly birds and bats, with research showing whooping cranes avoid turbines when selecting stopover sites. One study estimated between 140,000 and 328,000 birds are killed annually by collisions with turbines across the U.S. The U.S. Energy Information Administration estimated, however, that other human-related impacts also contribute to declines in population.
The wind industry works with biologists to find solutions to the impact of turbines on wildlife, and the Department of Energy awards grants each year to researchers addressing the issue, even as the sector faced pandemic investment risks in 2020. But, overall, scientists warn that climate change itself is a bigger threat to bird populations than wind turbines, according to the National Audobon Society.
Speaker Nancy Pelosi: "It just seems like every time you turn around, there's another thing. The president is saying wind power causes cancer. I associate myself with the remarks of Chairman Grassley; It's an 'idiotic' statement"
Canada Electricity Shortage threatens renewable energy transition as EV adoption and building decarbonization surge; Hydro-Quebec exports, wind power expansion, demand response, and smart grid resilience shape investment and capacity planning.
Key Points
A looming supply gap in central and eastern provinces driven by EVs, heating decarbonization, exports, and limited new hydro.
✅ Hydro-Quebec capacity pressured by exports and new loads
✅ Wind power prioritized; new mega-dams deemed unworkable
✅ Smart meters boost flexibility but raise cyber risk
Quebec and other provinces in central and eastern Canada are heading toward a significant shortage of electricity to respond to the various needs of a transition to renewable energy, and Ontario's energy storage push underscores how supply is tightening across the region.
This is according to Polytechnique Montréal’s Institut de l’énergie Trottier, which published a report titled A Strategic Perspective on Electricity in Central and Eastern Canada last week.
The white paper says that at the current rate, most provinces will be incapable of meeting the electricity needs created by the increase in the number of electric vehicles, including the federal 2035 EV sales mandate that will amplify demand, and the decarbonization of building heating by 2030. “The situation worsens if we consider carbon neutrality objectives of the federal government and some provinces for 2050,” the institute says.
The researchers called on public utilities to immediately review their investment plans for the coming years in light of examples such as B.C.'s power supply challenges that accompany rapid green ambitions.
In a news conference Wednesday, Premier François Legault said the province could indeed be short on electricity as debates over Quebec's EV push continue. “We’re open to exploiting green hydrogen, if the price is good and also based on the electrical capacity we have. Because currently, we predict that in the coming years we’re going to lack electricity, so we must be prudent.”
Quebec is in a better position than other provinces because it is the largest hydroelectricity producer in the country. But that energy source also attracts new clients that have contributed to increased demand over the coming years, including data centres, cryptocurrency miners and greenhouses.
Report co-author Normand Mousseau said that while Hydro-Québec largely has the capacity to meet demand from electric vehicles, even amid EV shortages and wait times for buyers, heating and manufacturers, export contracts to the United States “risk reducing its leeway.”
Hydro-Québec will therefore have to find new sources of electricity, and Mousseau said the answer isn’t new dams.
“The reservoirs give an immense flexibility to the network, but we don’t have the capacity today to flood territories like we have done in the past,” said Mousseau, the institute’s scientific director. “From an environmental viewpoint and a social accessibility one, it’s unworkable.”
The solution would be more wind turbines, he said, adding construction could happen at “very competitive rates” and if there’s a surplus, “we can sell it without issue because other provinces are in an even worse situation than ours,” a reality echoed by eco groups in Northern Ontario sustainability discussions focused on the grid’s future.
The researchers propose solutions based on six themes: regulations, pricing, demand management, data, support for implementation and resilience.
In the resilience category, the report notes that innovative technology like smart meters makes the network more flexible, with pilots such as EV-to-grid integration in Nova Scotia illustrating emerging options, but also increases the risk of cyberattacks. The more extreme weather caused by climate change also increases the risks of damage to infrastructure while at the same time increasing demand.
Pickering nuclear refurbishment will modernize Ontario's Candu reactors at Pickering B, sustaining 2,000 MW of clean electricity, aiding net-zero goals, and aligning with Ontario Power Generation plans and Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission reviews.
Key Points
An 11-year overhaul of Pickering B Candu reactors to extend life, keep 2,000 MW online, and back Ontario net-zero grid.
✅ 11-year project; 11,000 annual jobs; $19.4B GDP impact.
✅ Refurbishes four Pickering B Candu units; maintains 2,000 MW.
✅ Requires Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission license approvals.
The Ontario government has announced its intention to pursue a Pickering refurbishment at the venerable nuclear power station, which has been operational for over fifty years. This move could extend the facility's life by another 30 years.
This decision is timely, as Ontario anticipates a significant surge in electricity demand and a growing electricity supply gap in the forthcoming years. Additionally, all provinces are grappling with new federal mandates for clean electricity, necessitating future power plants to achieve net-zero carbon emissions.
Todd Smith, the Energy Minister, is expected to endorse Ontario Power Generation's proposal for the plant's overhaul, as per a preliminary version of a government press release.
The renovation will focus on four Candu reactors, known collectively as Pickering B, which were originally commissioned in the early 1980s. This upgrade is projected to continue delivering 2,000 megawatts of power, equivalent to the current output of these units.
According to the press release, the project will span 11 years, create approximately 11,000 annual jobs, and contribute $19.4 billion to Ontario's GDP. However, the total budget for the project remains unspecified.
The project follows the ongoing refurbishment of four units at the nearby Darlington nuclear station, which is more than halfway completed with a budget of $12.8 billion.
The proposal awaits the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission's approval, and officials face extension request timing considerations before key deadlines.
The Commission is also reviewing a prior request from OPG to extend the operational license of the existing Pickering B units until 2026. This extension would allow the plant to safely continue operating until the commencement of its renovation, pending approval.
Ontario's Ambitious Nuclear Strategy
The announcement regarding Pickering is part of Ontario's broader clean energy plan for an unprecedented expansion of nuclear power in Canada.
Last summer, the province announced its intention to nearly double the output at Bruce Power, currently the world's largest nuclear generating station.
Additionally, Ontario revealed SMR plans to construct three more alongside the existing project at Darlington. These reactors are expected to supply enough electricity to power around 1.2 million homes.
Discussions about revitalizing the Pickering facility began in 2022, after the station had been slated to close as planned amid debate, with Ontario Power Generation submitting a feasibility report to the government last summer.
The Ford government emphasized the necessity of this nuclear expansion to meet the increasing electricity demands anticipated from the auto sector's shift to electric vehicles, the steel industry's move away from coal-fired furnaces, and the growing population in Ontario.
Ontario's capability to attract major international car manufacturers like Volkswagen and Stellantis to produce electric vehicles and batteries is partly attributed to the fact that 90% of the province's electricity comes from non-fossil fuel sources.
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.”
Sub-Saharan Africa Energy Access faces critical deficits; SDG7, clean energy finance, off-grid solar, and microgrids drive electrification for health, education, and economy amid World Bank and IEA efforts to expand reliable, affordable power.
Key Points
Reliable, affordable power in sub-Saharan Africa via renewables, off-grid solar, and SDG7-led electrification.
✅ SDG7 targets universal, modern energy access by 2030
✅ Off-grid solar and microgrids boost rural electrification
✅ Health, education, and business depend on reliable power
Sub-Saharan Africa has an electricity problem. While the world as a whole has made great strides when it comes to providing access to electricity and moving toward universal electricity access worldwide (the world average is now 90 per cent with access, up from 83 per cent in 2010), southern and western African states still lag far behind.
According to Tracking SDG7: The Energy Progress Report, produced by a consortium of organisations including the World Bank, the International Energy Agency and the World Health Organization, 759 million people were without electricity in 2019 and threequarters of them were based in sub-Saharan Africa. At just seven per cent, South Sudan had the lowest access figures; Chad, Burundi and Malawi were only marginally higher. What’s more, due to a combination of factors, the situation is getting worse. In total, the region’s access deficit increased from 556 million people in 2010 to 570 million people in 2019.
These days, being without electricity has an impact on every sphere of life. The Covid-19 pandemic only served to put this into sharper relief. Intermittent electricity meant vaccination doses that rely on cold storage were impossible to deliver and, as more than 70 per cent of the health facilities in sub-Saharan Africa have no access to reliable electricity, the problem was vast. But even without a global pandemic, having no power stymies opportunity in every field, from education to economics.
French photojournalist Pascal Maitre, who has spent much of his career writing about sub-Saharan Africa, wanted to document the problems faced by people in areas with no electricity. He thought particularly carefully about the location for his project. ‘First, I was thinking I could take images in the Democratic Republic of the Congo,’ he says. ‘But then I thought that if you chose a place that has war, it’s logical that electricity won’t really work. So, instead, I wanted to find a place that is quite stable. I decided to go to Benin, where they have a democracy. It is a good example of a country that’s not in really bad shape but where they still have this problem. Also, I didn’t want to go to a place that is very remote, where it is normal not to have good service. So I decided to go to a place around 50 kilometres from the capital that you can get to by road.’
Maitre visited several villages in the region, as well as making trips to Chad and Senegal, and encountered the full range of limitations engendered by the power shortage. From teachers struggling to conduct lessons in the dark to midwives forced to work with only the weak light from a phone, the situation was clearly unacceptable. ‘People were very, very, very upset,’ he says. ‘I conducted a lot of interviews in different villages and lack of electricity touches education, economy, business, security and also emigration, because people have to move to big cities or maybe to Europe to get jobs.’
Where once the situation might have been accepted as the norm, people today are fully aware of the ways in which they are held back by the lack of power. As Maitre remembers: ‘A guy said to me one day, “Do you think it is normal that last time my wife delivered a baby, the midwife had to hold her phone between her teeth in order to see what she was doing?” You feel very frustrated.’ He adds that the fact that most people now have mobile phones only highlights the hardship. ‘Before, maybe it was not so frustrating. But now, most of these people have cellphones. The cellphone company puts antennae everywhere so the phones work, but people cannot recharge their phones. They have to go to the market, where someone will come with a generator to recharge.’
Governments and global organisations are very aware of the problem across the world as a whole. Sustainable Development Goal 7 (SDG7) – one of the 17 goals set out in 2015 by the United Nations General Assembly – was designed to ensure universal access to affordable, reliable, sustainable and modern energy by 2030, underscoring the push for clean, affordable and sustainable electricity for all by 2030. As part of this goal, international financial flows to developing countries in support of clean energy reached US$17 billion in 2018. As a result, some areas have seen huge improvement. According to the Energy Progress Report, in Latin America and the Caribbean, and in Eastern and South-Eastern Asia, the advance of electrification has been enough to approach universal access. By 2019, in Western Asia and North Africa, and Central and South Asia, 94 and 95 per cent of the population respectively had access to electricity.
But these statistics only serve to emphasise just how bad the situation is in sub-Saharan Africa, where electricity systems are unlikely to go green this decade according to several analyses. As the report states: ‘While renewable energy has demonstrated remarkable resilience during the pandemic, the unfortunate fact is that gains in energy access throughout Africa are being reversed: the number of people lacking access to electricity is set to increase in 2020, making basic electricity services unaffordable for up to 30 million people who had previously enjoyed access.’
The small silver lining is that if the situation is dealt with properly, the region could build a renewable-energy system from the ground up, rather than having to undergo the costly and complex transitions underway in developed countries. In rural areas, small-scale or off-grid renewable systems (mostly solar) are expected to play an important role, as highlighted by a recent IRENA report on decarbonisation, in increasing access. In fact, solar panels are already used in many areas. In 2019, 105 million people had access to off-grid solar solutions, up from 85 million in 2016, and almost half lived in sub-Saharan Africa, with 17 million in Kenya and eight million in Ethiopia.
Rachel Kyte is currently serving as the 14th dean of the Fletcher School at Tufts University in the USA, but her CV is long. She was previously CEO of the UN-affiliated Sustainable Energy for All (SeforALL), as well as the World Bank Group vice president and special envoy for climate change, leading the run-up to the Paris Agreement. According to her, a focus on renewables is absolutely essential, both for wider efforts to tackle climate change, with some advocating a fossil fuel lockdown to drive a climate revolution, but also for the people of sub-Saharan Africa. ‘The fossil fuel industry has said it will just extend the centralised fossil-fuel power systems that we have today to reach these people,’ she says.
Pickering Nuclear Plant Extension faces CNSC approval as Ontario Power Generation pursues license renewal before the June 30, 2023 deadline, amid a 2025 capacity crunch and grid reliability risks from decommissioning and overlapping nuclear outages.
Key Points
A plan to run Pickering past 2024 to Sept 2026, pending CNSC license renewal to address Ontario's 2025 capacity gap.
✅ CNSC approval needed for operation beyond Dec 31, 2024
✅ OPG aims to file by June 30, 2023 deadline
✅ Extension targets grid reliability through 2026
Ontario’s electricity generator has yet to file an official application to extend the life of the Pickering nuclear power plant, more than eight months after the Ford government announced a plan to continue operating Pickering for longer.
As the province faces an electricity shortfall in 2025 and beyond, the Ford government scrambled to prolong the Pickering power plant until September 2026, in order to guarantee a steady supply of power as the province experiences a rise in demand and shutdowns at other nuclear power plants.
The life extension may come down to the wire, however, as the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission (CNSC), the federal regulator tasked with approving or denying the extension, tells Global News the province has yet to file key paperwork.
The information is required for the application, including materials related to the proposed Pickering B refurbishment, and the government now has a month before the deadline runs out.
“The Commission requires that Ontario Power Generation submit specific information by June 30, 2023, if it intends to operate the Pickering Nuclear Generating Station beyond December 31, 2024,” the CNSC told Global News in a statement. “The Commission Registry has not yet received an application from Ontario Power Generation.”
If Ontario doesn’t receive the green light, the power plant which currently is responsible for 14 per cent of the province’s energy grid will be decommissioned in 2025, leaving the province with a significant electricity supply gap if replacement sources are not secured.
For its part, the Ford government doesn’t seem concerned about the impending timeline, even though the station was slated to close as planned, suggesting the Crown corporation responsible for the application will get it in on time.
“OPG is on track to submit their application before the end of June and has already started to submit supporting materials as part of the regulatory process toward clean power goals,” a spokesperson for energy minister Todd Smith said.
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