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Ottawa Hydro Substation Heritage Designation highlights Hydro Ottawa's 1920s architecture, Art Deco facades, and municipal utility history, protecting key voltage-reduction sites in Glebe, Carling-Merivale, Holland, King Edward, and Old Ottawa South.

Key Points

A city plan to protect Hydro Ottawa's 1920s substations for architecture, utility role, and civic electrical heritage.

✅ Protects five operating voltage-reduction sites citywide

✅ Recognizes Art Deco and early 20th century utility architecture

✅ Allows emergency demolition to ensure grid safety

The city of Ottawa is looking to designate five hydro substations built nearly a century ago as heritage structures, a move intended to protect the architectural history of Ottawa's earliest forays into the electricity business, even as Ottawa electricity consumption has shifted in recent years.

All five buildings are still used by Hydro Ottawa to reduce the voltage coming from transmission lines before the electricity is transmitted to homes and businesses, and when severe weather causes outages, Sudbury Hydro crews work to reconnect service across communities.

Electricity came to Ottawa in 1882 when two carbon lamps were installed on LeBreton Flats, heritage planner Anne Fitzpatrick told the city's built heritage subcommittee on Tuesday. It became a lucrative business, and soon a privately owned monopoly that drew public scrutiny similar to debates over retroactive charges in neighboring jurisdictions.

In 1905, city council held a special meeting to buy the electrical company, which led to a dramatic drop in electricity rates for residents, a contrast with recent discussions about peak hydro rates for self-isolating customers.

The substations are now owned by Hydro Ottawa, which agreed to the heritage designations on the condition it not be prevented from emergency demolitions if it needs to address incidents such as damaging storms in Ontario while it works to "preserve public safety and the continuity of critical hydro electrical services."

Built in 1922, the substation at the intersection of Glebe and Bronson avenues was the first to be built by the new municipal electrical department, long before modern battery storage projects became commonplace on Ontario's grid.

The largest of the substations being protected dates back to 1929 and is found at the corner of Carling Avenue and Merivale Road. It was built to accommodate a growing population in areas west of downtown including Hintonburg and Mechanicsville.

The substation on Holland Avenue near the Queensway is different from the others because it was built in 1924 to serve the Ottawa Electric Railway Company. The streetcar company operated from 1891 to 1959, and urban electrical infrastructure can face failures such as the Hydro-Québec manhole fire that left thousands without power.

This substation on King Edward Avenue was built in 1931 and designed by architect William Beattie, who also designed York Street Public School in Lowertown and the substation on Carling Avenue. 

The last substation to be built in a 'bold and decorative style' is at 39 Riverdale Ave. in Old Ottawa South, according to city staff. It was designed in an Art Deco style by prominent architect J. Albert Ewart, who was also behind the Civic Hospital and nearby Southminster Church on Bank Street.

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Ontario-U.S. Energy Tariff Dispute highlights cross-border trade tensions, retaliatory tariffs, export surcharges, and White House negotiations as Doug Ford meets U.S. officials to de-escalate pressure over steel, aluminum, and energy supplies.

Key Points

A trade standoff over energy exports and tariffs, sparked by Ontario's surcharge and U.S. duties on steel and aluminum.

✅ 25% Ontario energy surcharge paused before White House talks

✅ U.S. steel and aluminum tariffs reduced from 50% to 25%

✅ Potential energy supply cutoff remains leverage in negotiations

Ontario Premier Doug Ford's recent high-stakes diplomatic trip to Washington, D.C., underscores the delicate trade tensions between Canada and the United States, particularly concerning energy exports and Canada's electricity exports across the border. Ford's potential use of tariffs or even halting U.S. energy supplies, amid Ontario's energy independence considerations, remains a powerful leverage tool, one that could either de-escalate or intensify the ongoing trade conflict between the two neighboring nations.

The meeting in Washington follows a turbulent series of events that began with Ontario's imposition of a 25% surcharge on energy exports to the U.S. This move came in retaliation to what Ontario perceived as unfair treatment in trade agreements, a step that aligned with Canadian support for tariffs at the time. In response, U.S. President Donald Trump's administration threatened its own set of tariffs, specifically targeting Canadian steel and aluminum, which further escalated tensions. U.S. officials labeled Ford's threat to cut off U.S. electricity exports and energy supplies as "egregious and insulting," warning of significant economic retaliation.

However, shortly after these heated exchanges, Trump’s commerce secretary, Howard Lutnick, extended an invitation to Ford for a direct meeting at the White House. Ford described this gesture as an "olive branch," signaling a potential de-escalation of the dispute. In the lead-up to this diplomatic encounter, Ford agreed to pause the energy surcharge, allowing the meeting to proceed, amid concerns tariffs could spike NY energy prices, without further escalating the crisis. Trump's administration responded by lowering its proposed 50% tariff on Canadian steel and aluminum to a more manageable 25%.

The outcome of the meeting, which is set to address these critical issues, could have lasting implications for trade relations between Canada and the U.S. If Ford and Lutnick can reach an agreement, the potential for tariff imposition on energy exports, though experts advise against cutting Quebec's energy exports due to broader risks, could be resolved. However, if the talks fail, it is likely that both countries could face further retaliatory measures, compounding the economic strain on both sides.

As Canada and the U.S. continue to navigate these complex issues, where support for Canadian energy projects has risen, the outcome of Ford's meeting with Lutnick will be closely watched, as it could either defuse the tensions or set the stage for a prolonged trade battle.

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Renewables Overtake Coal in the US, as solar, wind, and hydro expand grid share; EIA data show an energy transition accelerated by COVID-19, slashing emissions, displacing fossil fuels, and reshaping electricity generation and climate policy.

Key Points

It refers to the milestone where US renewable energy generation surpassed coal, marking a pivotal energy transition.

✅ EIA data show renewables topped coal consumption in 2019.

✅ Solar, wind, and hydro displaced aging, costly coal plants.

✅ COVID-19 demand drop accelerated the energy transition.

Solar, wind and other renewable sources have toppled coal in energy generation in the United States for the first time in over 130 years, with the coronavirus pandemic accelerating a decline in coal that has profound implications for the climate crisis.

Not since wood was the main source of American energy in the 19th century has a renewable resource been used more heavily than coal, but 2019 saw a historic reversal, building on wind and solar reaching 10% of U.S. generation in 2018, according to US government figures.

Coal consumption fell by 15%, down for the sixth year in a row, while renewables edged up by 1%, even as U.S. electricity use trended lower. This meant renewables surpassed coal for the first time since at least 1885, a year when Mark Twain published The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and America’s first skyscraper was erected in Chicago.

Electricity generation from coal fell to its lowest level in 42 years in 2019, with the US Energy Information Administration (EIA) forecasting that renewables will eclipse coal as an electricity source this year, while a global eclipse by 2025 is also projected. On 21 May, the year hit its 100th day in which renewables have been used more heavily than coal.

“Coal is on the way out, we are seeing the end of coal,” said Dennis Wamsted, analyst at the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis. “We aren’t going to see a big resurgence in coal generation, the trend is pretty clear.”

The ongoing collapse of coal would have been nearly unthinkable a decade ago, when the fuel source accounted for nearly half of America’s generated electricity, even as a brief uptick in 2021 was anticipated. That proportion may fall to under 20% this year, with analysts predicting a further halving within the coming decade.

A rapid slump since then has not been reversed despite the efforts of the Trump administration, which has dismantled a key Barack Obama-era climate rule to reduce emissions from coal plants and eased requirements that prevent coal operations discharging mercury into the atmosphere and waste into streams.

Coal releases more planet-warming carbon dioxide than any other energy source, with scientists warning its use must be rapidly phased out to achieve net-zero emissions globally by 2050 and avoid the worst ravages of the climate crisis.

Countries including the UK and Germany are in the process of winding down their coal sectors, and in Europe renewables are increasingly crowding out gas as well, although in the US the industry still enjoys strong political support from Trump.

“It’s a big moment for the market to see renewables overtake coal,” said Ben Nelson, lead coal analyst at Moody’s. “The magnitude of intervention to aid coal has not been sufficient to fundamentally change its trajectory, which is sharply downwards.”

Nelson said he expects coal production to plummet by a quarter this year but stressed that declaring the demise of the industry is “a very tough statement to make” due to ongoing exports of coal and its use in steel-making. There are also rural communities with power purchase agreements with coal plants, meaning these contracts would have to end before coal use was halted.

The coal sector has been beset by a barrage of problems, predominantly from cheap, abundant gas that has displaced it as a go-to energy source. The Covid-19 outbreak has exacerbated this trend, even as global power demand has surged above pre-pandemic levels. With plunging electricity demand following the shutting of factories, offices and retailers, utilities have plenty of spare energy to choose from and coal is routinely the last to be picked because it is more expensive to run than gas, solar, wind or nuclear.

Many US coal plants are ageing and costly to operate, forcing hundreds of closures over the past decade. Just this year, power companies have announced plans to shutter 13 coal plants, including the large Edgewater facility outside Sheboygan, Wisconsin, the Coal Creek Station plant in North Dakota and the Four Corners generating station in New Mexico – one of America’s largest emitters of carbon dioxide.

The last coal facility left in New York state closed earlier this year.

The additional pressure of the pandemic “will likely shutter the US coal industry for good”, said Yuan-Sheng Yu, senior analyst at Lux Research. “It is becoming clear that Covid-19 will lead to a shake-up of the energy landscape and catalyze the energy transition, with investors eyeing new energy sector plays as we emerge from the pandemic.”

Climate campaigners have cheered the decline of coal but in the US the fuel is largely being replaced by gas, which burns more cleanly than coal but still emits a sizable amount of carbon dioxide and methane, a powerful greenhouse gas, in its production, whereas in the EU wind and solar overtook gas last year.

Renewables accounted for 11% of total US energy consumption last year – a share that will have to radically expand if dangerous climate change is to be avoided. Petroleum made up 37% of the total, followed by gas at 32%. Renewables marginally edged out coal, while nuclear stood at 8%.

“Getting past coal is a big first hurdle but the next round will be the gas industry,” said Wamsted. “There are emissions from gas plants and they are significant. It’s certainly not over.”
 

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DOE Wind Energy Funding backs 13 R&D projects advancing offshore wind, distributed energy, and utility-scale turbines, including microgrids, battery storage, nacelle and blade testing, tall towers, and rural grid integration across the United States.

Key Points

DOE Wind Energy Funding is a $28M R&D effort in offshore, distributed, and utility-scale wind to lower cost and risk.

✅ $6M for rural microgrids, storage, and grid integration.

✅ $7M for offshore R&D, nacelle and long-blade testing.

✅ Up to $10M demos; $5M for tall tower technology.

The U.S. Department of Energy announced that in order to advance wind energy in the U.S., 13 projects have been selected to receive $28 million. Project topics focus on technology development while covering distributed, offshore wind growth and utility-scale wind found on land.

The selections were announced by the DOE’s Assistant Secretary for the Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, Daniel R. Simmons, at the American Wind Energy Association Offshore Windpower Conference in Boston, as New York's offshore project momentum grows nationwide.

Wind Project Awards

According to the DOE, four Wind Innovations for Rural Economic Development projects will receive a total of $6 million to go toward supporting rural utilities via facilitating research drawing on U.K. wind lessons for deployment that will allow wind projects to integrate with other distributed energy resources.

These endeavors include:

Bergey WindPower (Norman, Oklahoma) working on developing a standardized distributed wind/battery/generator micro-grid system for rural utilities;

Electric Power Research Institute (Palo Alto, California) working on developing modeling and operations for wind energy and battery storage technologies, as large-scale projects in New York progress, that can both help boost wind energy and facilitate rural grid stability;

Iowa State University (Ames, Iowa) working on optimization models and control algorithms to help rural utilities balance wind and other energy resources; and

The National Rural Electric Cooperative Association (Arlington, Virginia) providing the development of standardized wind engineering options to help rural-area adoption of wind.

Another six projects are to receive a total of $7 million to facilitate research and development in offshore wind, as New York site investigations advance, with these projects including:

Clemson University (North Charleston, South Carolina) improving offshore-scale wind turbine nacelle testing via a “hardware-in-the-loop capability enabling concurrent mechanical, electrical and controller testing on the 7.5-megawatt dynamometer at its Wind Turbine Drivetrain Testing Facility to accelerate 1 GW on the grid progress”; and

The Massachusetts Clean Energy Center (Boston) upgrading its Wind Technology Testing Center to facilitate structural testing of 85- to 120-meter-long (roughly 278- to 393-foot-long) blades, as BOEM lease requests expand, among other projects.

Additionally, two offshore wind technology demonstration projects will receive up to $10 million for developing initiatives connected to reducing wind energy risk and cost. One last project will also be granted $5 million for the development of tall tower technology that can help overcome restrictions associated with transportation.

“These projects will be instrumental in driving down technology costs and increasing consumer options for wind across the United States as part of our comprehensive energy portfolio,” said Simmons.

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Hourly Electricity Emissions Tracking maps grid balancing areas, embodied emissions, and imports/exports, revealing carbon intensity shifts across PJM, ERCOT, and California ISO, and clarifying renewable energy versus coal impacts on health and climate.

Key Points

An hourly method tracing generation, flows, and embodied emissions to quantify carbon intensity across US balancing areas.

✅ Hourly traces of imports/exports and generation mix

✅ Consumption-based carbon intensity by balancing area

✅ Policy insights for renewables, coal, health costs

In the United States, electricity generation accounts for nearly 30% of our carbon emissions. Some states have responded to that by setting aggressive renewable energy standards; others are hoping to see coal propped up even as its economics get worse. Complicating matters further is the fact that many regional grids are integrated, and as America goes electric the stakes grow, meaning power generated in one location may be exported and used in a different state entirely.

Tracking these electricity exports is critical for understanding how to lower our national carbon emissions. In addition, power from a dirty source like coal has health and environment impacts where it's produced, and the costs of these aren't always paid by the parties using the electricity. Unfortunately, getting reliable figures on how electricity is produced and where it's used is challenging, even for consumers trying to find where their electricity comes from in the first place, leaving some of the best estimates with a time resolution of only a month.

Now, three Stanford researchers—Jacques A. de Chalendar, John Taggart, and Sally M. Benson—have greatly improved on that standard, and they have managed to track power generation and use on an hourly basis. The researchers found that, of the 66 grid balancing areas within the United States, only three have carbon emissions equivalent to our national average, and they have found that imports and exports of electricity have both seasonal and daily changes. de Chalendar et al. discovered that the net results can be substantial, with imported electricity increasing California's emissions/power by 20%.

Hour by hour
To figure out the US energy trading landscape, the researchers obtained 2016 data for grid features called balancing areas. The continental US has 66 of these, providing much better spatial resolution on the data than the larger grid subdivisions. This doesn't cover everything—several balancing areas in Canada and Mexico are tied in to the US grid—and some of these balancing areas are much larger than others. The PJM grid, serving Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Maryland, for example, is more than twice as large as Texas' ERCOT, in a state that produces and consumes the most electricity in the US.

Despite these limitations, it's possible to get hourly figures on how much electricity was generated, what was used to produce it, and whether it was used locally or exported to another balancing area. Information on the generating sources allowed the researchers to attach an emissions figure to each unit of electricity produced. Coal, for example, produces double the emissions of natural gas, which in turn produces more than an order of magnitude more carbon dioxide than the manufacturing of solar, wind, or hydro facilities. These figures were turned into what the authors call "embodied emissions" that can be traced to where they're eventually used.

Similar figures were also generated for sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxides. Released by the burning of fossil fuels, these can both influence the global climate and produce local health problems.

Huge variation
The results were striking. "The consumption-based carbon intensity of electricity varies by almost an order of magnitude across the different regions in the US electricity system," the authors conclude. The low is the Bonneville Power grid region, which is largely supplied by hydropower; it has typical emissions below 100kg of carbon dioxide per megawatt-hour. The highest emissions come in the Ohio Valley Electric region, where emissions clear 900kg/MW-hr. Only three regional grids match the overall grid emissions intensity, although that includes the very large PJM (where capacity auction payouts recently fell), ERCOT, and Southern Co balancing areas.

Most of the low-emissions power that's exported comes from the Pacific Northwest's abundant hydropower, while the Rocky Mountains area exports electricity with the highest associated emissions. That leads to some striking asymmetries. Local generation in the hydro-rich Idaho Power Company has embodied emissions of only 71kg/MW-hr, while its imports, coming primarily from Rocky Mountain states, have a carbon content of 625kg/MW-hr.

The reliance on hydropower also makes the asymmetry seasonal. Local generation is highest in the spring as snow melts, but imports become a larger source outside this time of year. As solar and wind can also have pronounced seasonal shifts, similar changes will likely be seen as these become larger contributors to many of these regional grids. Similar things occur daily, as both demand and solar production (and, to a lesser extent, wind) have distinct daily profiles.

The Golden State
California's CISO provides another instructive case. Imports represent less than 30% of its total electric use in 2016, yet California electricity imports provided 40% of its embodied emissions. Some of these, however, come internally from California, provided by the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power. The state itself, however, has only had limited tracking of imported emissions, lumping many of its sources as "other," and has been exporting its energy policies to Western states in ways that shape regional markets.

Overall, the 2016 inventory provides a narrow picture of the US grid, as plenty of trends are rapidly changing our country's emissions profile, including the rise of renewables and the widespread adoption of efficiency measures and other utility trends in 2017 that continue to evolve. The method developed here can, however, allow for annual updates, providing us with a much better picture of trends. That could be quite valuable to track things like how the rapid rise in solar power is altering the daily production of clean power.

More significantly, it provides a basis for more informed policymaking. States that wish to promote low-emissions power can use the information here to either alter the source of their imports or to encourage the sites where they're produced to adopt more renewable power. And those states that are exporting electricity produced primarily through fossil fuels could ensure that the locations where the power is used pay a price that includes the health costs of its production.

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Martha's Vineyard 100% Renewable Energy advances electrification across EVs, heat pumps, distributed solar, offshore wind, microgrids, and battery storage, cutting emissions, boosting efficiency, and strengthening grid resilience for storms and sea-level rise.

Key Points

It is an islandwide plan to electrify transport and buildings using wind, solar, storage, and a modern resilient grid.

✅ Electrify transport: EV adoption and SSA hybrid-electric ferries.

✅ Deploy heat pumps for efficient heating and cooling in buildings.

✅ Modernize the grid: distributed solar, batteries, microgrids, VPP.

Over the past year, it has become increasingly clear that climate change is accelerating. Here in coastal New England, annual temperatures and precipitation have risen more quickly than expected, tidal flooding is now commonplace, and storms have increased in frequency and intensity. The window for avoiding the worst consequences of a climate-changed planet is closing.

At their recent special town meeting, Oak Bluffs citizens voted to approve the 100 per cent renewable Martha’s Vineyard warrant article; now, all six towns have adopted the same goals for fossil fuel reduction and green electricity over the next two decades. Establishing these targets for the adoption of renewable energy, though, is only an initial step. Town and regional master plans for energy transformation are being developed, but this is a whole-community effort as well. Now is the time for action.

There is much to do to combat climate change, but our most important task is to transition our energy system from one heavily dependent on fossil fuels to one that is based on clean electricity. The good news is that this can be accomplished with currently available technology, and can be done in an economically efficient manner.

Electrification not only significantly lowers greenhouse gas emissions, but also is a powerful energy efficiency measure. So even though our detailed Island energy model indicates that eliminating all (or almost all) fossil fuel use will mean our electricity use will more than double, posing challenges for state power grids in some regions, our overall annual energy consumption will be significantly lower.

So what do we specifically need to do?

The primary targets for electrification are transportation (roughly 60 peer cent of current fossil fuel use on Martha’s Vineyard) and building heating and cooling (40 per cent).

Over the past two years, the increase in the number of electric vehicle models available across a wide range of price points has been remarkable — sedans, SUVs, crossovers, pickup trucks, even transit vans. When rebates and tax credits are considered, they are affordable. Range anxiety is being addressed both by increases in vehicle performance and the growing availability of charging locations (other than at home, which will be the predominant place for Islanders to refuel) and, over time, enable vehicle-to-grid support for our local system. An EV purchase should be something everyone should seriously consider when replacing a current fossil vehicle.

The elephant in the transportation sector room is the Steamship Authority. The SSA today uses roughly 10 per cent of the fossil fuel attributable to Martha’s Vineyard, largely but not totally in the ferries. The technology needed for fully electric short-haul vessels has been under development in Scandinavia for a number of years and fully electric ferries are in operation there. A conservative approach for the SSA would be to design new boats to be hybrid diesel-electric, retrofittable to plug-in hybrids to allow for shoreside charging infrastructure to be planned and deployed. Plug-in hybrid propulsion could result in a significant reduction in emissions — perhaps as much as 95 per cent, per the long-range plan for the Washington State ferries. While the SSA has contracted for an alternative fuel study for its next boat, given the long life of the vessels, an electrification master plan is needed soon.

For building heating and cooling, the answer for electrification is heat pumps, both for new construction and retrofits. These devices move heat from outside to inside (in the winter) or inside to outside (summer), and are increasingly integrated into connected home energy systems for smarter control. They are also remarkably efficient (at least three times more efficient than burning oil or propane), and today’s technology allows their operation even in sub-zero outside temperatures. Energy costs for electric heating via heat pumps on the Vineyard are significantly below either oil or propane, and up-front costs are comparable for new construction. For new construction and when replacing an existing system, heat pumps are the smart choice, and air conditioning for the increasingly hot summers comes with the package.

A frequent objection to electrification is that fossil-fueled generation emits greenhouse gases — thus a so-called green grid is required in order to meet our targets. The renewable energy fraction of our grid-supplied electricity is today about 30 per cent; by 2030, under current legislation that fraction will reach 54 per cent, and by 2040, 77 per cent. Proposed legislation will bring us even closer to our 2040 goals. The Vineyard Wind project will strongly contribute to the greening of our electricity supply, and our local solar generation (almost 10 per cent of our overall electricity use at this point) is non-negligible.

A final important facet of our energy system transformation is resilience. We are dependent today on our electricity supply, and this dependence will grow. As we navigate the challenges of climate change, with increasingly more frequent and more serious storms, 2021 electricity lessons underscore that resilience of electricity supply is of paramount importance. In many ways, today’s electricity distribution system is basically the same approach developed by Edison in the late 19th century. In partnership with our electric utility, we need to modernize the grid to achieve our resiliency goals.

While the full scope of this modernization effort is still being developed, the outline is clear. First, we need to increase the amount of energy generated on-Island — to perhaps 25 per cent of our total electricity use. This will be via distributed energy resources (in the form of distributed solar and battery installations as well as community solar projects) and the application of advanced grid control systems. For emergency critical needs, the concept of local microgrids that are detachable from the main grid when that grid suffers an outage are an approach that is technically sound and being deployed elsewhere. Grid coordination of distributed resources by the utility allows for handling of peak power demand; in the early 2030s this could result in what is known as a virtual power plant on the Island.

The adoption of the 100 renewable Martha’s Vineyard warrant articles is an important milestone for our community. While the global and national efforts in the climate crisis may sometimes seem fraught, we can take some considerable pride in what we have accomplished so far and will accomplish in coming years. As with many change efforts, the old catch-phrase applies: think globally, act locally.
 

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