Measuring all those Wii devices

World Bank Energy Policy debates financing for coal, oil, gas, and renewables to fight energy poverty, expand grid reliability, ensure baseload power, and balance climate goals with development finance for affordable, reliable electricity access.

Key Points

It outlines the bank's stance on financing fossil fuels and renewables to expand affordable, reliable electricity.

✅ Focus on energy access, baseload reliability, and poverty alleviation

✅ Debate over coal, gas, and renewables in development finance

✅ Geopolitics: China and Russia fill funding gaps, raising risks

Why isn’t the World Bank using all available energy resources in its global efforts to fight poverty? That’s the question I’ve asked World Bank President David Malpass. Nearly two years ago, the multilateral development bank decided to stop supporting critical coal, oil and gas projects that help people in developing countries escape poverty.

Along with 11 other senators, and as a member who votes on whether to give U.S. taxpayer dollars to the World Bank, I am pressing the bank to lift these restrictions. Developing countries desperately need access to a steady supply of affordable, reliable clean electricity to support economic growth.

The World Bank has pulled funding for critical electricity projects in poor countries, including high-efficiency power stations that are fueled by coal, even as efforts to revitalize coal communities with clean energy have grown.

Despite Kosovo having the world’s fifth-largest reserves of coal, the bank announced it would only support new energy projects from renewable sources going forward. Kosovo’s Minister of Economic Development Valdrin Lluka responded: “We don’t have the luxury to do such experiments in a poor country such as Kosovo. … It is in our national security interest to secure base energy inside our country.”

The World Bank’s misguided move comes as 840 million people worldwide are living without electricity, including 70 percent of sub-Saharan Africa, and as the fall in global energy investment may lead to shortages.

Even more troubling, nearly 3 billion people in developing countries rely on fuels like wood and other biomass for cooking and home heating, resulting in serious health problems and premature deaths, and the pandemic saw widespread electricity shut-offs that deepened energy insecurity. In 2016, household smoke killed an estimated 2.6 million people.

The World Bank’s mission is to lift people out of poverty. The bank is now compromising that mission in favor of a political agenda targeting certain energy sources.

With the World Bank blocking financing to affordable and reliable energy projects, Russia and China are stepping up their investments in order to gain geopolitical leverage.

President Vladimir Putin is pursuing Russian oil and gas projects in Mozambique, Gabon, and Angola. China’s Belt and Road Initiative is supporting traditional energy resources, with 36 percent of its power projects from 2014 to 2017 involving coal. South Africa had to turn to the China Development Bank to fund its $1.5 billion coal-fired power plant.

There are real risks for countries partnering with China and Russia on these projects. Developing countries are facing what some are calling China’s “debt trap” diplomacy. These nations have also raised concerns over safety compliance, unfair business practices, and labor standards.

As the bank’s largest contributor, the United States has a duty to make sure U.S. taxpayer dollars are used wisely and effectively. Every U.S. dollar at the World Bank should make a difference for people in the developing world.

My colleagues and I have asked the bank to pursue an all-of-the-above energy strategy as it strives to achieve its mission to end extreme poverty and promote shared prosperity. We will take the bank’s response into account during the congressional appropriations process.

The United States is a top global energy producer. And yet Democrats running for president are pursuing anti-energy policies that would hurt not only the United States but the entire world, with implications for U.S. national security as well.

Utilizing our abundant energy resources has fueled an American energy renaissance and a booming U.S. economy, even as disruptions in coal and nuclear have strained the grid, with millions of new jobs and higher wages.

People who are struggling to survive and thrive in developing countries deserve the same opportunity to access affordable and reliable sources of power.

As Microsoft founder and global philanthropist Bill Gates has noted of renewables: "Many people experiencing energy poverty live in areas without access to the kind of grids that are needed to make those technologies cheap and reliable enough to replace fossil fuels."

Ultimately, there is a role for all sources of energy to help countries alleviate poverty and improve the education, health and wellbeing of their people.

The solution to ending energy poverty does not lie in limiting options, but in using all available options. The World Bank must recommit to ending extreme poverty by helping countries use all of the world’s abundant energy resources. Let’s end energy poverty now.

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U.S. Energy Crunch disrupts fuel and power markets, driving natural gas price spikes, coal resurgence, utility mix shifts, supply chain strains for EV batteries, and inflation pressures, complicating climate policy, OPEC outreach and LNG trade

Key Points

Supply-demand gaps raise fuel costs, revive coal, strain EV materials, and complicate U.S. climate policy and plans.

✅ Natural gas spikes shift generation from gas to coal

✅ Supply chain shortages hit nickel, silicon, and chips

✅ Policy tensions between price relief and decarbonization

A global energy crunch is creating pain for people struggling to fill their tanks and heat their homes, as well as roiling the utility industry’s plans to change its mix of generation and complicating the Biden administration’s plans to tackle climate change.

The ripple effects of a surge in natural gas prices include a spike in coal use and emissions that counter clean energy targets. High fossil fuel prices also are translating into high prices and a supply crunch for key minerals like silicon used in clean energy projects. On a call with investors yesterday, a Tesla Inc. executive said the company is having a hard time finding enough nickel for batteries.

The crisis could pose political problems for the Biden administration, which spent the last few months fending off criticism about rising fuel prices and inflation (Energywire, Oct. 14).

“Energy issues at this moment are as salient to the American public as they have been in quite some time,” said Christopher Borick, who directs the Muhlenberg College Institute of Public Opinion in Pennsylvania, where Biden stopped yesterday to pitch his infrastructure plan.

While gasoline prices have gotten headlines all summer, natural gas prices have risen faster than motor fuels, more than doubling from an average $1.92 per thousand cubic feet in September 2020 to $5.16 last month. By comparison, gasoline prices have risen about 55 percent in the last year, to $3.36 per gallon nationwide this week, according to AAA.

The roots of the problem go back to the beginning of the pandemic and the recession in 2020. Oil and gas prices fell so fast then that many producers, particularly in the U.S., simply stopped drilling.

Oil companies began predicting a few months later that the abrupt shutdown would eventually lead to shortages and price spikes when the economy recovered. Those predictions turned out to be accurate.

With the economy beginning to recover, demand for gas has gone up, but there’s not enough supply to go around.

While the U.S. energy crunch isn’t as severe as Europe’s energy crisis today, and analysts predict that gas prices will gradually fall next year, consumers could be in for a rough couple of months.

Here’s four ways the global energy crisis is impacting the United States, from the electricity sector to the political landscape:

What are the political repercussions?
For the Biden administration, the energy price hikes come amid fears of rising inflation and persistent supply bottlenecks at the nation’s ports as its climate ambitions face headwinds in Congress.

“The confluence of energy prices, logistical challenges and the need to move on climate have raised this to the top tier,” said Borick, who in the past has polled on energy and environmental issues in Pennsylvania.

Borick noted the administration is facing counterpressures: Even as it pushes to decarbonize the nation’s electric system, it wants to keep gas prices in check. High gasoline prices have been linked to declining political approval ratings, including for presidents, even if much of the price hikes are beyond their control.

White House press secretary Jen Psaki said earlier this month that the administration can take steps to address what it called “short-term supply issues,” but also needs to focus on the long term — and climate.

In hopes of capping prices, the White House has spoken with members of OPEC about increasing oil production — though OPEC has little control over natural gas prices. And earlier this month, the administration talked to U.S. oil and gas producers about helping to bring down prices.

That comes even as environmentalists have pushed Biden to ban federal fossil fuel leasing and drilling and stop new projects.

The moves to curb prices have prompted ridicule from Republicans, who have accused Biden of declaring war on U.S. energy by canceling the Keystone XL pipeline.

“The Biden administration won’t say it out loud, yet let’s admit it: There is a crisis,” Sen. John Barrasso (R-Wyo.) said this week on the Senate floor. “It is one that Joe Biden and his administration has created. It is a crisis of Joe Biden’s own making.”

The situation has also resurfaced comparisons to former President Carter, who struggled politically in the 1970s with gasoline shortages and other energy pressures. Some political scientists say, though, the comparison between the two isn’t apples to apples.

"In 1979, the crisis began with the Iranian Revolution, producing a supply shortage. In the USA, some states rationed the supply. That’s not occurring now. Oil prices were also regulated, another difference, “ said Terry Madonna, a senior fellow in residence for political affairs at Millersville University.

A Morning Consult poll released yesterday carried warning signs for Democrats with worries about the economy on the rise across the political spectrum.

Voters, however, were evenly split on how Biden is handling energy. Forty-two percent of respondents approve of Biden’s energy policy, compared with 45 percent who disapproved. The margin of error is 2 percentage points.

Will the electricity mix change?
Higher gas prices are giving coal a boost in some markets.

Atlanta-based Southern Co. told CNBC earlier this week, for instance, that coal was about 17 percent of the company’s power mix last year. That has changed in 2021.

“The unintended consequence of high gas prices is that coal becomes more economic, and so my sense is … our coal production has bumped up above 20 percent,” Southern CEO Tom Fanning said. “Now, how long that’ll persist, I don’t know.”

Fanning said “what we’re seeing right now, and the real challenge in America, is this notion of energy in transition.”

But the U.S. power sector has been evolving for years, with more renewables and less coal on the grid, and experts say the current energy crunch won’t change long-term utility trends in the industry.

“In general, I wouldn’t place too much emphasis on short-term fluctuations,” Jay Apt, a professor at Carnegie Mellon University, said in an email. “There is still a robust supply chain for most components needed for low-pollution power, including renewables.”

In fact, elevated fossil fuel prices, and high natural gas prices in particular, could accelerate the move toward wind, solar and batteries in some areas. That’s because power plants that run on coal and natural gas can be affected by rising and volatile fuel prices, as illustrated by the recent move in commodities globally. That means higher costs to run the facilities, even if power prices often climb along with gas prices.

“If I were a utility planner, this would cause me to double down on new generation from [wind] and solar and storage as opposed to building additional natural gas plants where, you know, I could be having these super high and volatile operating costs,” said Bri-Mathias Hodge, an associate professor in the Department of Electrical, Computer and Energy Engineering at the University of Colorado, Boulder.

Ed Hirs, an energy fellow at the University of Houston, said the current global situation doesn’t change the U.S. power sector’s overall move toward generation with lower operating costs.

For example, he said nuclear and coal plants can require hundreds of employees, and both have fuel costs. Hirs said a gas facility also needs fuel and may need dozens of employees. Wind and solar facilities often need a smaller number of workers and don’t require fuel in their operations, he noted.

“Eventually the cheap wins out,” Hirs said.

That isn’t even factoring in climate change — the reason world leaders are seeking to slash greenhouse gas emissions. Indeed, lowering emissions remains a priority among many states and big companies in the U.S.

Over the next 10 to 15 years, Hirs said, a key question will be whether battery technology can compete economically in terms of backing up renewables. He said a national carbon price, if enacted, would aid renewables and enhance returns on batteries.

“The real battle is going to be between natural gas and battery storage,” Hirs said.

Apt and M. Granger Morgan, who’s also a Carnegie Mellon professor, noted in a Hill piece last month that the U.S. gets about 40 percent of its power from carbon-free sources, including nuclear.

“Modelers and many power system operators agree that it is possible that renewables can cost-effectively make up roughly 80% of electricity generation,” the professors wrote, adding that other sources could include “storage and gas turbines powered with hydrogen, synfuels, or natural gas with carbon capture.”

What about EVs and renewables?
As for electric vehicles, executives with Tesla said on a call yesterday that supply-chain problems are the major brake on production for both vehicles and batteries.

Chief Financial Officer Zachary Kirkhorn said that the company’s factories aren’t running at full capacity because of an ongoing shortage of semiconductor chips. Customers are waiting longer for vehicles, he said, and wait lists are growing.

The challenges extend to raw materials. In batteries, Kirkhorn said, the company is having trouble finding enough nickel, and in vehicles, it is scrounging for aluminum. He said the problem is "not small," and that prices may rise as supply contracts come up for renewal.

The supply problems are creating "cost headwinds," he said, and so are rising labor costs. Tesla is not immune from the worker shortages that are plaguing the entire U.S. economy.

The production woes aren’t limited to Tesla: Automakers around the world have have had their output crimped by the chip shortage that accompanied the economic rebound after pandemic lockdowns. Unlike many other automakers, Tesla hasn’t been forced to pause its factory lines.

Tesla said it is poised to greatly expand its production of batteries for the electric grid — with a caveat.

Last month, Tesla broke ground on a new California factory to make Megapack, its 3 megawatt-per-hour lithium-ion batteries for use by power companies. That future factory’s capacity, 40 gigawatt per hour a year, is vastly more than the 3 GWh it made in the last calendar year.

However, today’s supply-chain problems are braking the making of both Megapack and Powerwall, Tesla’s battery for homes, Kirkhorn said. He added that production will increase "as soon as parts allow us."

Other advocates for EVs and renewable power expressed little concern about the supply crunch’s meaning for their industries, noting that higher prices alone don’t automatically trigger a broader green revolution on their own.

Those problems likely wouldn’t change the immediate course of the energy transition, researchers said.

"Short-term trends, week to week or even month to month, don’t matter much for investors or policy makers," wrote John Graham, a former budget official with the Bush administration and professor at Indiana University’s O’Neill School of Public and Environmental Affairs, in an email to E&E News.

The crunch may give policymakers a glimpse of the future, however, according to one minerals analyst.

"This isn’t going to be an outlier. I think increasingly you’re going to see pockets of the world start to feel these strains," said Andrew Miller, product director at Benchmark Mineral Intelligence, which focuses its research on battery minerals and battery supply chains.

The U.S. and its allies are only now beginning to develop their own supply chains for batteries and other key clean energy technologies, he noted. "The issue you’re facing, and this is one coming over time, is to have the platform in place. You have to have the supply chain of raw materials," he said.

"I think you’re going to see the most turbulence over the coming decade. … It’s not going to be a smooth transition,” added Miller.

How long will gas prices stay high?
The gap between natural gas demand and supply has led to severe price spikes in Europe, where utilities and other gas buyers have to compete against China for cargoes of liquefied natural gas, according to a research note from IHS Markit Ltd.

Here in the U.S., the causes are the same, but the results aren’t as extreme. Less than 10 percent of domestic gas production is exported as LNG, so American customers don’t have to compete as much against overseas buyers.

Instead, gas-hungry sectors of the economy have run into another problem, IHS analyst Matthew Palmer said in an interview. Gas producers have been cautious about increasing their output, largely because of pressure from investors to limit their spending.

“That theme has really put a governor on production,” he said.

The disconnect will likely mean higher home gas bills and higher electric prices this winter, although deep freeze events or warm weather could disrupt the trend, he said. The U.S. Energy Information Administration is predicting that average heating bills for homes that use gas furnaces will rise 30 percent this winter.

This comes as U.S. gas supply remains high, according to a biennial assessment from the Potential Gas Committee, a group of volunteer geoscientists, engineers and other experts.

Including reserves, future gas supply in the U.S. stands at a record 3,863 trillion cubic feet, up 25 tcf from levels reported in 2019, the group said Tuesday at an event co-hosted with the American Gas Association.

Of that total, so-called technically recoverable resources — or those in the ground but not yet recovered — are 3,368 tcf, the PGC said, down less than 0.2 percent from the last assessment.

The amount of technically recoverable gas went relatively unchanged from year-end 2018 for several reasons, including a lack of company activity in exploration efforts last year due to COVID, said Alexei Milkov, the group’s executive director.

Another factor is that basins mature and shale plays “cannot increase in resources forever,” said Milkov, also a professor of geology and geological engineering at the Colorado School of Mines.

Still, Milkov added, “We cannot tell you right now if we are on a new plateau, or if we are going to start seeing more growth in gas resources again, right, because it’s a complex issue.”

The EIA predicts that gas production will increase and prices will begin to drop in 2022.

David Flaherty, CEO of the Republican polling firm Magellan Strategies in Colorado, said prices could particularly hit seniors. But he said he expected the energy crunch to ease in the U.S. well before the election.

“By early summer, this is likely to be behind us,” he said.

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Nuclear Waste Corrosion accelerates as stainless steel, glass, and ceramics interact in aqueous conditions, driving localized corrosion in repositories like Yucca Mountain, according to Nature Materials research on high-level radioactive waste storage.

Key Points

Degradation of waste forms and canisters from water-driven chemistry, causing accelerated, localized corrosion in storage.

✅ Stainless steel-glass contact triggers severe localized attack

✅ Ceramics and steel co-corrosion observed under aqueous conditions

✅ Yucca Mountain-like chemistry accelerates waste form degradation

The materials the United States and other countries plan to use to store high-level nuclear waste, even as utilities expand carbon-free electricity portfolios, will likely degrade faster than anyone previously knew because of the way those materials interact, new research shows.

The findings, published today in the journal Nature Materials (https://www.nature.com/articles/s41563-019-0579-x), show that corrosion of nuclear waste storage materials accelerates because of changes in the chemistry of the nuclear waste solution, and because of the way the materials interact with one another.

"This indicates that the current models may not be sufficient to keep this waste safely stored," said Xiaolei Guo, lead author of the study and deputy director of Ohio State's Center for Performance and Design of Nuclear Waste Forms and Containers, part of the university's College of Engineering. "And it shows that we need to develop a new model for storing nuclear waste."

Beyond waste storage, options like carbon capture technologies are being explored to reduce atmospheric CO2 alongside nuclear energy.

The team's research focused on storage materials for high-level nuclear waste -- primarily defense waste, the legacy of past nuclear arms production. The waste is highly radioactive. While some types of the waste have half-lives of about 30 years, others -- for example, plutonium -- have a half-life that can be tens of thousands of years. The half-life of a radioactive element is the time needed for half of the material to decay.

The United States currently has no disposal site for that waste; according to the U.S. General Accountability Office, it is typically stored near the nuclear power plants where it is produced. A permanent site has been proposed for Yucca Mountain in Nevada, though plans have stalled. Countries around the world have debated the best way to deal with nuclear waste; only one, Finland, has started construction on a long-term repository for high-level nuclear waste.

But the long-term plan for high-level defense waste disposal and storage around the globe is largely the same, even as the U.S. works to sustain nuclear power for decarbonization efforts. It involves mixing the nuclear waste with other materials to form glass or ceramics, and then encasing those pieces of glass or ceramics -- now radioactive -- inside metallic canisters. The canisters then would be buried deep underground in a repository to isolate it.

At the generation level, regulators are advancing EPA power plant rules on carbon capture to curb emissions while nuclear waste strategies evolve.

In this study, the researchers found that when exposed to an aqueous environment, glass and ceramics interact with stainless steel to accelerate corrosion, especially of the glass and ceramic materials holding nuclear waste.

In parallel, the electrical grid's reliance on SF6 insulating gas has raised warming concerns across Europe.

The study qualitatively measured the difference between accelerated corrosion and natural corrosion of the storage materials. Guo called it "severe."

"In the real-life scenario, the glass or ceramic waste forms would be in close contact with stainless steel canisters. Under specific conditions, the corrosion of stainless steel will go crazy," he said. "It creates a super-aggressive environment that can corrode surrounding materials."

To analyze corrosion, the research team pressed glass or ceramic "waste forms" -- the shapes into which nuclear waste is encapsulated -- against stainless steel and immersed them in solutions for up to 30 days, under conditions that simulate those under Yucca Mountain, the proposed nuclear waste repository.

Those experiments showed that when glass and stainless steel were pressed against one another, stainless steel corrosion was "severe" and "localized," according to the study. The researchers also noted cracks and enhanced corrosion on the parts of the glass that had been in contact with stainless steel.

Part of the problem lies in the Periodic Table. Stainless steel is made primarily of iron mixed with other elements, including nickel and chromium. Iron has a chemical affinity for silicon, which is a key element of glass.

The experiments also showed that when ceramics -- another potential holder for nuclear waste -- were pressed against stainless steel under conditions that mimicked those beneath Yucca Mountain, both the ceramics and stainless steel corroded in a "severe localized" way.

Other Ohio State researchers involved in this study include Gopal Viswanathan, Tianshu Li and Gerald Frankel.

This work was funded in part by the U.S. Department of Energy Office of Science.

Meanwhile, U.S. monitoring shows potent greenhouse gas declines confirming the impact of control efforts across the energy sector.

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Power plant staff sequestration isolates essential operators on-site at plants and control centers, safeguarding critical infrastructure and grid reliability during the COVID-19 pandemic under DHS CISA guidance, with social distancing, offset shifts, and stockpiled supplies.

Key Points

A protocol isolating essential grid workers on-site to maintain operations at plants and control centers.

✅ Ensures grid reliability and continuity of critical infrastructure

✅ Implements social distancing, offset shifts, and isolation protocols

✅ Stockpiles food, beds, PPE, and sanitation for essential crews

The U.S. electric industry may ask essential staff to live on site at power plants and control centers to keep operations running if the coronavirus outbreak worsens, after a U.S. grid warning from the overseer, and has been stockpiling beds, blankets, and food for them, according to industry trade groups and electric cooperatives.

The contingency plans, if enacted, would mark an unprecedented step by power providers to keep their highly-skilled workers healthy as both private industry and governments scramble to minimize the impact of the global pandemic that has infected more than 227,000 people worldwide, with some utilities such as BC Hydro at Site C reporting COVID-19 updates as the situation evolves.

“The focus needs to be on things that keep the lights on and the gas flowing,” said Scott Aaronson, vice president of security and preparedness at the Edison Electric Institute (EEI), the nation’s biggest power industry association. He said that some “companies are already either sequestering a healthy group of their essential employees or are considering doing that and are identifying appropriate protocols to do that.”

Maria Korsnick, president of the Nuclear Energy Institute, said that some of the nation’s nearly 60 nuclear power plants are also “considering measures to isolate a core group to run the plant, stockpiling ready-to-eat meals and disposable tableware, laundry supplies and personal care items.”

Neither group identified specific companies, though nuclear worker concerns have been raised in some cases.

Electric power plants, oil and gas infrastructure and nuclear reactors are considered “critical infrastructure” by the federal government, and utilities continue to emphasize safety near downed lines even during emergencies. The U.S. Department of Homeland Security is charged with coordinating plans to keep them operational during an emergency.

A DHS spokesperson said that its Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency had issued guidance to local governments and businesses on Thursday asking them to implement policies to protect their critical staff from the virus, even as an EPA telework policy emerged during the pandemic.

“When continuous remote work is not possible, businesses should enlist strategies to reduce the likelihood of spreading the disease,” the guidance stated. “This includes, but is not necessarily limited to, separating staff by off-setting shift hours or days and/or social distancing.”

Public health officials have urged the public to practice social distancing as a preventative measure to slow the spread of the virus, and as more people work from home, rising residential electricity use is being observed alongside daily routines. If workers who are deemed essential still leave, go to work and return to their homes, it puts the people they live with at risk of exposure. 

California has imposed a statewide shutdown, asking all citizens who do not work in those critical infrastructure industries not to leave their homes, a shift that may raise household electricity bills for consumers. Similar actions have been put in place in cities across America.

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Hospital Electricity Reliability underpins ICU operations, ventilators, medical devices, and diagnostics, reducing power outages risks via grid power and backup generators, while energy poverty and blackouts magnify COVID-19 mortality in vulnerable regions.

Key Points

Hospital electricity reliability is steady power that keeps ICU care, ventilators and medical devices operating.

✅ ICU loads: ventilators, monitors, infusion pumps, diagnostics

✅ Grid power plus backup generators minimize outage risk

✅ Energy poverty increases COVID-19 mortality and infection

Robert Bryce, Contributor

During her three-year career as a registered nurse, my friend, C., has cared for tuberculosis patients as well as ones with severe respiratory problems. She’s now caring for COVID-19 patients at a hospital in Ventura County, California, where debates about keeping the lights on continue amid the state’s energy transition. Is she scared about catching the virus? “No,” she replied during a phone call on Thursday. “I’m pretty unflappable.”

What would scare her? She quickly replied, “a power outage,” a threat that grows during summer blackouts when heat waves drive demand. About a year ago, while working in Oregon, the hospital she was working in lost power for about 45 minutes. “It was terrifying,” she said. 

C., who wasn’t authorized by her hospital to talk to the media, and thus asked me to only use the initial of her first name, said that COVID-19 patients are particularly reliant on electrical devices. She quickly ticked off the machines: “The bed, the IV machine, vital signs monitor, heart monitor, the sequential compression devices...” COVID-19 patients are hooked up to a minimum of five electrical devices, she said, and if the virus-stricken patient needs high-pressure oxygen or a ventilator, the number of electrical devices could be two or three times that number. “You name it, it plugs in,” she said.  

Today In: Energy

The virus has infected some 2.2 million people around the world and killed more than 150,000,including more than 32,000 people here in the U.S. While those numbers are frightening, it is apparent that the toll would be far higher without adequate supplies of reliable electricity. Modern healthcare systems depend on electricity. Hospitals are particularly big consumers. Power demand in hospitals is about 36 watts per square meter, which is about six times higher than the electricity load in a typical American home, and utilities are turning to AI to adapt to electricity demands during surges. 

Beating the coronavirus is all about electricity. Indeed, nearly every aspect of coronavirus detection, testing, and treatment requires juice. Second, it appears that the virus is more deadly in places where electricity is scarce or unreliable. Finally, if there are power outages in virus hotspots or hospitals, a real risk in a grid with more blackouts than other developed countries, the damage will be even more severe. 

As my nurse friend in Ventura County made clear, her ability to provide high-quality care for patients is wholly dependent on reliable electricity. The thermometers used to check for fever are powered by electricity. The monitors she uses to keep track of her patients, as well as her Vocera, the walkie-talkie that she uses to communicate with her colleagues, runs on batteries. Testing for the virus requires electricity. One virus-testing machine, Abbott Labs’ m2000, is a 655-pound appliance that, according to its specification sheet, runs on either 120 or 240 volts of electricity. The operating manual for a ventilator made by Hamilton Medical is chock full of instructions relating to electricity, including how to manage the machine’s batteries and alarms. 

While it may be too soon to make a direct connection between lack of electricity and the lethality of the coronavirus, the early signs from the Navajo reservation indicate that energy poverty amplifies the danger. The sprawling reservation has about 175,000 residents, but it has a higher death toll from the virus than 13 states. About 10 percent of Navajos do not have electricity in their homes and more than 30 percent lack indoor plumbing. 

The death rate from the virus on the reservation now stands at 3.4 percent, which is nearly twice the global average. In the middle of last week, the entire population of Native American tribes in the U.S. accounted for about 1,100 confirmed cases of the virus and about 44 deaths. Navajos accounted for the majority of those, with 830 confirmed cases of coronavirus and 28 deaths. 

On Saturday night, the Navajo Times reported a major increase, with 1,197 positive cases of COVID-19 on the reservation and 44 deaths. Other factors may contribute to the high infection and mortality rates on the reservation, including  high rates of diabetes, obesity, and crowded residential living situations. That said, electricity and water are essential to good hygiene and health authorities say that frequent hand washing helps cut the risk of contracting the virus. 

The devastation happening on Navajoland provides a window into what may happen in crowded, electricity-poor countries like India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh. It also shows what could happen if a tornado or hurricane were to wipe out the electric grid in virus hotspots like New Orleans, as extreme weather increasingly afflicts the grid nationwide. Sure, most American hospitals have backup generators to help assure reliable power. But those generators can fail. Further, they usually burn diesel fuel which needs to be replenished every few days. 

The essential point here is that our hospitals and critical health care machines aren’t running on solar panels and batteries. Instead, they are running on grid power that’s being provided by reliable sources — coal, natural gas, hydro, and nuclear power — which together produce about 89 percent of the electricity consumed in this country, even as Russian hacking of utilities highlights cyber risks. The pandemic — which is inflicting trillions of dollars of damage on our economy and tens of thousands of deaths — underscores the criticality of abundant and reliable electricity to our society and the tremendous damage that would occur if our health care infrastructure were to be hit by extended blackouts during the fight to stop COVID-19.

In a follow-up interview on Saturday with my friend, C., she told me that while caring for patients, she and her colleagues “are entirely dependent on electricity. We take it for granted. It’s a hidden assumption in our work,” a reminder echoed by a grid report card that warns of dangerous vulnerabilities. She quickly added she and her fellow nurses “aren’t trained or equipped to deal with circumstances that would come with shoddy power. If we lost power completely, people will die.”

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ABL has secured a contract for the UK Subsea Power Link, highlighting ABL Group’s marine warranty role in Eastern Green Link 2, a 2 GW offshore electricity superhighway connecting Scotland and England to enhance grid reliability and renewable energy transmission.

Key Points: ABL Group’s contract for the UK Subsea Power Link

ABL Group has been appointed to provide marine warranty survey services for the 2 GW Eastern Green Link 2 subsea interconnector between Scotland and England.

✅ Manages vessel suitability checks, installation oversight, and DP assurance

✅ Strengthens UK grid reliability and advances the clean energy transition

✅ Sizeable contract valued between USD 1 million and 3 million

Energy and marine consultancy ABL, a subsidiary of ABL Group, has been awarded a contract by Eastern Green Link 2 (EGL2) to provide marine warranty survey (MWS) services for the installation of a new 2 GW subsea power connection between Scotland and England.

EGL2 is one of the United Kingdom’s most significant energy-infrastructure projects, involving the creation of a 505-kilometre “electricity superhighway” that will enable simultaneous power transfer between Peterhead in Aberdeenshire and Drax in North Yorkshire, mirroring a renewable power link announced for the same corridor recently. The project is designed to strengthen grid resilience, integrate renewable energy from Scotland’s offshore resources, and advance the UK’s broader energy transition goals.

Under the terms of the contract, ABL will be responsible for the technical review and approval of the project and procedural documentation, as well as conducting suitability surveys of the proposed fleet for marine transportation and installation operations. The company will also provide dynamic positioning (DP) assurance where required and will review and approve all warranted operations through on-site attendances, reflecting practices used on projects like the Great Northern Transmission Line in North America.

Cable-laying operations for the link are scheduled to take place between January and September 2028, amid wider efforts to fast-track grid connections across the UK. According to ABL, the engagement represents a “sizeable” contract, valued between USD 1 million and 3 million.

“This appointment reflects ABL's reputation as a trusted MWS partner for major power transmission infrastructure development and reinforces our position at the forefront of supporting the UK's energy transition,” said Hege Norheim, CEO of ABL Group. “We look forward to contributing to this strategic initiative.”

The subsea interconnector, known as Eastern Green Link 2, will transmit up to 2 gigawatts of electricity—enough to power approximately 2 million homes. It forms part of the Great Grid Upgrade, National Grid’s nationwide program to modernize and expand the transmission network in preparation for a low-carbon future, alongside a recent 2 GW substation milestone.

By linking renewable-rich northern Scotland with high-demand regions in England, EGL2 is expected to reduce congestion on the existing grid by leveraging HVDC technology to improve transfer efficiency, enhance security of supply, and facilitate the more efficient flow of surplus renewable energy south. The connection will also support the UK government’s target of decarbonizing the electricity system by 2035.

ABL’s appointment follows a period of intensive marine and geotechnical surveys along the proposed cable route to assess seabed conditions and environmental sensitivities. The company’s marine warranty oversight will ensure that transportation and installation operations meet strict safety, technical, and environmental standards demanded by insurers and project partners, as seen in a recent cross-border transmission approval in North America.

For ABL Group, which provides engineering and risk services to the offshore energy and marine industries worldwide, the contract marks another milestone in its expanding portfolio of subsea power and transmission projects across Europe. With operations set to begin in 2028, the Eastern Green Link 2 initiative represents both a major engineering challenge and a key enabler of the UK’s offshore energy ambitions, echoing a recent offshore wind power milestone in the U.S.

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