Ontario to Reintroduce Renewable Energy Projects 5 Years After Cancellations

EV Carpocalypse signals potential mismatch between electric vehicle production and demand, as charging infrastructure, utility coordination, and plug-in hybrid strategies lag forecasts, while state mandates and market-share plays drive cautious, data-informed scaling.

Key Points

EV Carpocalypse describes overbuilt EV supply versus demand amid charging rollout, mandates, and risk-managed scaling.

✅ Forecasts vs actual EV demand may diverge in near term

✅ Charging infrastructure and utilities lag vehicle output

✅ Mandates and PHEVs cushion adoption while data guides scaling

According to Forbes contributor David Kiley, and Wards Automotive columnist John McElroy, there may be an impending “carpocalypse” of electric vehicles on the way. Sounds very damning and it’s certainly not the upbeat tone I’ve taken on nearly every piece of EV demand content I’ve authored but the author, Kiley does bring up some interesting points worth considering. EV Adoption is happening, and it’s certainly doing so at ever faster rates as the market nears an EV inflection point today. The infrastructure (charging stations, utility cooperation) is being built out more slowly than vehicle manufacturers are producing cars but, as the GM president on EV hurdles has noted, the issue seems to be just that, maybe even the short and medium term plans for EV manufacturing are too aggressive.

#google#

With new EV and plug-in hybrid vehicle sales representing a mere .6% of new car cales in the US, a sign that EV sales remain behind gas cars even as new models proliferate, car makers are are going to be spending more than $100 billion to come out with more than a hundred models of battery electric vheicles which also includes PHEVs and the fear is these vehicles aren’t going to sell in the numbers that automakers and industry analysts may have expected. But forecasts are just that, forecasts, even as U.S. EV sales surge into 2024 suggest momentum. So there’s a valid argument to be made that they’ll either overshoot the true mark or come in way below the actual amount. With nine U.S. states mandating that 15% of new cars sold be EVs by 2025, you could say that at least automakers have supporters in state government helping to push the new technology into the hands of more drivers.

Still, it’s anyone’s guess as to what true adoption will be, and a brief Q1 2024 market share dip underscores lingering volatility. The use of big data and just in time manufacturing will ensure that manufacturers will miss the mark on EVs by less than they have in the past, and will able to cope with breaking even on these vehicles for the sake of gobbling up precious early stage market share. After all, many vendors have up to this point been very willing to break even or make a loss on their lease-only EVs or on EV or hybrid financing in order to gain that share and build out their brand awareness and technical prowess. With some stops and starts, demand will meet supply or supply may need to meet demand but either way, the EV adoption wave is coming to a driveway near you. 

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EV Charging Infrastructure accelerates with federal funding, NEVI corridors, and Level 2/3 DC fast charging to cut range anxiety, support apartment dwellers, and scale to 500,000 public chargers alongside tax credits and state mandates.

Key Points

The network of public and private hardware, software, and policies enabling reliable Level 2/3 EV charging at scale.

✅ $7,500/$4,000 tax credits spur adoption and charger demand

✅ NEVI funding builds 500,000 public, reliable DC fast chargers

✅ Equity focus: apartment, curbside, bidirectional and inductive tech

Speaking in front of a line of the latest electric vehicles (EVs) at this month’s North American International Auto Show, President Joe Biden declared: “The great American road trip is going to be fully electrified.”

Most vehicles on the road are still gas guzzlers, but Washington is betting big on change, with EV charging networks competing to expand as it hopes that major federal investment will help reach a target set by the White House for 50% of new cars to be electric by 2030. But there are roadblocks – specifically when it comes to charging them all. “Range anxiety,” or how far one can travel before needing to charge, is still cited as a major deterrent for potential EV buyers.

The auto industry recently passed the 5% mark of EV market share – a watershed moment, arriving ahead of schedule according to analysts, before rapid growth. New policies at the state and local level could very well spur that growth: the Inflation Reduction Act, which passed this summer, offers tax credits of $4,000 to purchase a used EV and up to $7,500 for certain new ones. In August, California, the nation’s largest state and economy, announced rules that would ban all new gas-powered cars by 2035, as part of broader grid stability efforts in the state. New York plans to follow.

So now, the race is on to provide chargers to power all those new EVs.

The administration’s target of 500,000 public charging units by 2030 is a far cry from the current count of nearly 50,000, according to the Department of Energy’s estimate. And those new chargers will have to be fast – what’s known as Level 2 or 3 charging – and functional in order to create a truly reliable system, even as state power grids face added demands across regions. Today, many are not.

Last week, the White House approved plans for all 50 states, along with Washington DC, and Puerto Rico, to set up chargers along highways, unlocking $1.5bn in federal funding to that end, as US automakers’ charger buildout to complement public funds. The money comes from the landmark infrastructure bill passed last year, which invests $7.5bn for EV charging in total.

But how much of that money is spent is largely going to be determined at the local level, amid control over charging debates among stakeholders. “It’s a difference between policy and practice,” said Drew Lipsher, the chief development officer at Volta, an EV charging provider. “Now that the federal government has these policies, the question becomes, OK, how does this actually get implemented?” The practice, he said, is up to states and municipalities.

As EV demand spikes, a growing number of cities are adopting policies for EV charging construction. In July, the city of Columbus passed an “EV readiness” ordinance, which will require new parking structures to host charging stations proportionate to the number of total parking spots, with at least one that is ADA-accessible. Honolulu and Atlanta have passed similar measures.

One major challenge is creating a distribution model that can meet a diversity of needs.

At the moment, most EV owners charge their cars at home with a built-in unit, which governments can help subsidize. But for apartment dwellers or those living in multi-family homes, that’s less feasible. “When we’re thinking about the largest pieces of the population, that’s where we need to really be focusing our attention. This is a major equity issue,” said Alexia Melendez Martineau, the policy manager at Plug-In America, an EV consumer advocacy group.

Bringing power to people is one such solution. In Hoboken, New Jersey, Volta is working with the city to create a streetside charging network. “The network will be within a five-minute walk of every resident,” said Lipsher. “Hopefully this is a way for us to really import it to cities who believe public EV charging infrastructure on the street is important.” Similarly, in parts of Los Angeles – as in Berlin and London – drivers can get a charge from a street lamp.

And there may be new technologies that could help, exciting experts and EV enthusiasts alike. That could include the roads themselves charging EVs through a magnetizable concrete technology being piloted in Indiana and Detroit. And bidirectional charging, where, similar to solar panels, drivers can put their electricity back into the grid – or perhaps even to another EV, through what’s known as electric vehicle supply equipment (EVSE). Nissan approved the technology for their Leaf model this month.

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Clean Energy Buyers Alliance 2030 Goal targets a 90% carbon-free U.S. grid, accelerating power-sector decarbonization via corporate renewable energy procurement, market and policy reforms, and customer demand to enable net-zero electrification across industries.

Key Points

The Alliance's plan to reach a 90% carbon-free U.S. electricity system by 2030 via customer-driven markets and policy.

✅ Corporate buyers scale renewable PPAs and aggregation

✅ Market and policy reforms unlock clean power access

✅ Goal aligns with net-zero and widespread electrification

The Clean Energy Buyers Association (CEBA) and the Clean Energy Buyers Institute (CEBI), which together make up the Clean Energy Buyers Alliance, have announced a profound new aspiration for impact: a 90% carbon-free U.S. electricity system by 2030 and a global community of energy customers driving the global energy transition forward.

Alongside the two organizations’ bold new vision of the future – customer-driven clean energy for all – the Alliance will super-charge the work of its predecessor organizations, the Renewable Energy Buyers Alliance (REBA) and the REBA Institute, which represent the most iconic global companies with more than $6 trillion dollars in annual revenues and 14 million employees.

“This is the decisive decade for climate action and especially for decarbonization of the power sector,” said Miranda Ballentine, CEO of CEBA and CEBI. “To achieve a net-zero economy worldwide by 2050, the United States must lead. And the power sector must accelerate toward a 2030 timeline as electrification of other industries will be driving up power use.”

In the U.S. alone, more than 60% of electricity is consumed by the commercial and industrial sectors. Institutional energy customers have accelerated the deployment of clean energy solutions over the last 10 years to achieve increasingly ambitious greenhouse gas reduction targets, even as a federal coal plan remains under debate, and further cement the critical role of customers in decarbonizing the energy system. The Clean Energy Buyers Association Deal Tracker shows that 7.9 GW of new corporate renewable energy project announcements in the first three quarters of this year are equivalent to 40% of all new carbon free energy capacity added in the U.S. so far in 2021.

“With our new vision of customer-driven clean energy for all, we are also unveiling new organization brands,” Ballentine continued. “I’m excited to announce that REBA will become CEBA—the Clean Energy Buyers Association—and will focus on activating our community of energy customers and partners to deploy market and policy solutions for a carbon-free energy system. The REBA Institute will become the Clean Energy Buyers Institute (CEBI) and will focus on solving the toughest market and policy barriers to achieving a carbon-free energy system in collaboration with policymakers, leading philanthropies, and energy market stakeholders. Together, CEBA and CEBI will make up the new Clean Energy Buyers Alliance.”

To decarbonize the U.S. electricity system 90% by 2030, a goal aligned with California's 100% carbon-free mandate efforts, and to activate a community of customers driving clean energy around the world, the Clean Energy Buyers Alliance will drive three critical transformations to:

Unlock markets so that energy customers can use their buying power and market-influence, building on a historic U.S. climate deal this year, to accelerate electricity decarbonization.

Catalyze communities of energy customers to actively choose clean energy through Mission Innovation collaborations and to do more together than they could on their own.

Decarbonize the grid for all, since not every energy customer can or will use their buying power to choose clean energy.

“The Clean Energy Buyers Alliance is setting the bar for what energy buyers, utilities and governments should and need to be doing to achieve a carbon-free energy future,” said Michael Terrell, CEBA board chair and Director of Energy at Google. “This ambitious approach is a critical step in tackling climate change. The time for meaningful climate action is now and we must collectively be bolder and more ambitious in our actions in both the public and private sectors – starting today.”

This new vision of customer-driven clean energy for all is an unprecedented opportunity for every member of the Clean Energy Buyers Alliance community – from energy customers to providers to manufacturers – to all parties up and down the energy supply chain to lead the evolution of a new energy economy, which will require incentives to double investment in clean energy to rise to $4 trillion by 2030.

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Global Wind Power Growth will hit record installations, buoying renewable energy, offshore wind, onshore capacity, and economic recovery, as GWEC forecasts resilient post-Covid markets led by China and the US with strong investment and jobs.

Key Points

Global Wind Power Growth is the forecast rise in capacity driving renewable energy, jobs, and lower emissions.

✅ 71.3 GW installed in 2020; only 6% below pre-Covid forecast

✅ 348 GW added by 2024; nearly 1,000 GW total capacity

✅ Offshore wind resilient; 6.5 GW in 2020, China-led

Wind power will continue to show record growth, as renewables set to shatter records over the next five years despite the impacts of the Covid-19 crisis, and will make a crucial contribution to economic recovery... According to the latest market outlook by GWEC Market Intelligence, 71.3GW of wind power capacity is expected to be installed in 2020, which is only a 6% reduction from pre-Covid forecasts. This is a significant increase from original predictions that expected wind power installations to be reduced by up to 20 per cent due to the pandemic, demonstrating the resilience of the wind power industry across the globe.

From 2020 to 2024, the cumulative global wind energy market will grow at a compound annual rate of 8.5% and installing 348GW of new capacity, bringing total global wind power capacity to nearly 1,000GW by the end of 2024, which is an increase of 54% for total wind power installations compared to 2019. While some project completion dates have been pushed into 2021 due to the pandemic, next year is expected to be a record year for the wind industry with 78GW of new wind capacity forecasted to be installed in 2021. Over 50% of the onshore wind capacity added between 2020 to 2024 will be installed in China and the US, where U.S. solar and wind growth is supported by favourable government plans, led by installation rushes to meet subsidy deadlines.

The offshore wind sector has been largely shielded from the impacts of the Covid-19 crisis, GWEC Market Intelligence has indeed increased its forecast for offshore wind by 5 per cent to 6.5 GW of new installations in 2020, another record year for the industry, as offshore wind's $1 trillion outlook comes into focus, led by the installation rush in China. Up until 2024, over 48GW of new offshore wind capacity is expected to be installed, with another 157GW forecasted to be installed from 2025 to 2030 across key markets such as offshore wind in the UK and Asia.

“While the Covid-19 crisis has impacted every industry across the world, wind power has continued to grow and thrive. This is no surprise given the cost competitiveness of wind energy and the need to rapidly reproduce carbon emissions. Fossil fuel industries face market fluctuations and require bailouts to stay afloat, while wind turbines across the world have continued to spin and provide affordable, clean energy to citizens everywhere," says Ben Backwell, CEO of GWEC.

“Thanks to the localised nature of wind power supply chains and project construction, the sector has continued to generate billions in local investment and thousands of jobs to support economic recovery. However, in order to tap into the full potential of wind power to drive a green recovery, governments must ensure that energy markets and policies allow a continued ramp up in investment in wind and other renewables, and avoid unintended effects such as the Solar ITC extension impact on the US wind market, while disincentivising investment in expensive and declining fossil fuel industries," he says.

Biggest markets

China and the US will continue to be the two main markets driving growth over the next few years, with U.S. wind power surges underscoring the momentum. "We have increased or maintained our forecasts for onshore wind in regions such as Latin America, North America, Africa, and the Middle East over the next five years, with only minor decreases in Asia Pacific and Europe. However, these reductions are not necessarily a direct impact of Covid-19, but also a symptom of pre-existing regulatory issues, such as protracted permitting procedures, which are slowing down installations. In particular, offshore wind has demonstrated its resilience by exceeding our pre-pandemic forecasts for 2020, and will be an important source of growth in the decade ahead," Feng Zhao, strategy director at GWEC.

“We have seen a series of carbon neutrality commitments by major economies such as China, Japan and South Korea over the past few weeks. Since wind power is a key technology for decarbonisation, building on the evolution in 2016, these targets will increase the forecast for wind power over the next few decades. However, the right enabling regulatory and policy frameworks must be in place to accelerate renewable energy growth to meet these targets. China, the world’s largest wind power market and largest carbon emitter, has pledged to go carbon-neutral by 2060. To have a chance at achieving this target, we need to be installing 50GW of wind power per year in China from now until 2025, and then 60GW from 2026 onwards. It is crucial that governments firm up carbon neutrality targets with tangible actions to drive wind and other renewable energy growth at the levels needed to achieve these aims”, he says.

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Clean Energy Investment is surging as renewables, electric vehicles, grids, storage, and nuclear outpace fossil fuels, driven by energy security, affordability, and policies like the Inflation Reduction Act, the IEA's World Energy Investment report shows.

Key Points

Investment in renewables, EVs, grids, and storage now surpasses fossil fuels amid cost and security pressures.

✅ $1.7T to clean tech vs just over $1T to fossil fuels this year.

✅ For every $1 in fossil, about $1.7 goes to clean energy.

✅ Solar investment poised to overtake oil production spending.

Investment in clean energy technologies is significantly outpacing spending on fossil fuels as affordability and security concerns, underpinned by analyses showing renewables cheapest new power in many markets, triggered by the global energy crisis strengthen the momentum behind more sustainable options, according to the International Energy Agency's (IEA) latest World Energy Investment report.

About $2.8 trillion (€2.6 trillion) is set to be invested globally in energy this year, of which over $1.7 trillion (€1.59 trillion) is expected to go to clean technologies - including renewables, electric vehicles, nuclear power, grids, storage, low-emissions fuels, efficiency improvements and heat pumps – according to report.

The remainder, slightly more than $1 trillion (€937.7 billion), is going to coal, gas and oil, despite growing calls for a fossil fuel lockdown to meet climate goals.

Annual clean energy investment is expected to rise by 24% between 2021 and 2023, driven by renewables and electric vehicles, with renewables breaking records worldwide over the same period.

But more than 90% of this increase comes from advanced economies and China, which the IEA said presents a serious risk of new dividing lines in global energy if clean energy transitions don’t pick up elsewhere.

“Clean energy is moving fast – faster than many people realise. This is clear in the investment trends, where clean technologies are pulling away from fossil fuels,” said IEA executive director Fatih Birol. “For every dollar invested in fossil fuels, about 1.7 dollars are now going into clean energy. Five years ago, this ratio was one-to-one. One shining example is investment in solar, which is set to overtake the amount of investment going into oil production for the first time.”

Led by solar, low-emissions electricity technologies are expected to account for almost 90% of investment in power generation, reflecting the global renewables share above 30% in electricity markets.

Consumers are also investing in more electrified end-uses. Global heat pump sales have seen double-digit annual growth since 2021. Electric vehicle sales are expected to leap by a third this year after already surging in 2022.

Clean energy investments have been boosted by a variety of factors in recent years, including periods of strong economic growth and volatile fossil fuel prices that raised concerns about energy security, and insights from the IRENA decarbonisation report that underscore broader benefits, especially following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Furthermore, enhanced policy support through major actions like the US Inflation Reduction Act and initiatives in Europe's green surge, Japan, China and elsewhere have played a role.

In Ireland, more than a third of electricity is expected to be green within four years, illustrating national progress.

The biggest shortfalls in clean energy investment are in emerging and developing economies, the IEA added. It pointed to some bright spots, such as dynamic investments in solar in India and in renewables in Brazil and parts of the Middle East. However, investment in many countries is being held back by factors including higher interest rates, unclear policy frameworks and market designs, weak grid infrastructure, financially strained utilities and a high cost of capital.

"Much more needs to be done by the international community, especially to drive investment in lower-income economies, where the private sector has been reluctant to venture," according to the IEA.

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EV Adoption Limits highlight that electric vehicles alone cannot meet emissions targets; life cycle assessment, carbon budgets, clean grids, public transit, and battery materials constraints demand broader decarbonization strategies, city redesign, and active travel.

Key Points

EV Adoption Limits show EVs alone cannot hit climate targets; modal shift, clean grids, and travel demand are essential.

✅ 350M EVs by 2050 still miss 2 C goals without major mode shift

✅ Grid demand rises 41%, requiring clean power and smart charging

✅ Battery materials constraints need recycling, supply diversification

Today there are more than seven million electric vehicles (EVs) in operation around the world, compared with only about 20,000 a decade ago. It’s a massive change – but according to a group of researchers at the University of Toronto’s Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering, it won’t be nearly enough to address the global climate crisis. 

“A lot of people think that a large-scale shift to EVs will mostly solve our climate problems in the passenger vehicle sector,” says Alexandre Milovanoff, a PhD student and lead author of a new paper published in Nature Climate Change. 

“I think a better way to look at it is this: EVs are necessary, but on their own, they are not sufficient.” 

Around the world, many governments are already going all-in on EVs. In Norway, for example, where EVs already account for half of new vehicle sales, the government has said it plans to eliminate sales of new internal combustion vehicles by 2025. The Netherlands aims to follow suit by 2030, with France and Canada's EV goals aiming to follow by 2040. Just last week, California announced plans to ban sales of new internal combustion vehicles by 2035.

Milovanoff and his supervisors in the department of civil and mineral engineering – Assistant Professor Daniel Posen and Professor Heather MacLean – are experts in life cycle assessment, which involves modelling the impacts of technological changes across a range of environmental factors. 

They decided to run a detailed analysis of what a large-scale shift to EVs would mean in terms of emissions and related impacts. As a test market, they chose the United States, which is second only to China in terms of passenger vehicle sales. 

“We picked the U.S. because they have large, heavy vehicles, as well as high vehicle ownership per capita and high rate of travel per capita,” says Milovanoff. “There is also lots of high-quality data available, so we felt it would give us the clearest answers.” 

The team built computer models to estimate how many electric vehicles would be needed to keep the increase in global average temperatures to less than 2 C above pre-industrial levels by the year 2100, a target often cited by climate researchers. 

“We came up with a novel method to convert this target into a carbon budget for U.S. passenger vehicles, and then determined how many EVs would be needed to stay within that budget,” says Posen. “It turns out to be a lot.” 

Based on the scenarios modelled by the team, the U.S. would need to have about 350 million EVs on the road by 2050 in order to meet the target emissions reductions. That works out to about 90 per cent of the total vehicles estimated to be in operation at that time. 

“To put that in perspective, right now the total proportion of EVs on the road in the U.S. is about 0.3 per cent,” says Milovanoff. 

“It’s true that sales are growing fast, but even the most optimistic projections of an electric-car revolution suggest that by 2050, the U.S. fleet will only be at about 50 per cent EVs.” 

The team says that, in addition to the barriers of consumer preferences for EV deployment, there are technological barriers such as the strain that EVs would place on the country’s electricity infrastructure, though proper grid management can ease integration. 

According to the paper, a fleet of 350 million EVs would increase annual electricity demand by 1,730 terawatt hours, or about 41 per cent of current levels. This would require massive investment in infrastructure and new power plants, some of which would almost certainly run on fossil fuels in some regions. 

The shift could also impact what’s known as the demand curve – the way that demand for electricity rises and falls at different times of day – which would make managing the national electrical grid more complex, though vehicle-to-grid strategies could help smooth peaks. Finally, there are technical challenges stemming from the supply of critical materials for batteries, including lithium, cobalt and manganese. 

The team concludes that getting to 90 per cent EV ownership by 2050 is an unrealistic scenario. Instead, what they recommend is a mix of policies, rather than relying solely on a 2035 EV sales mandate as a singular lever, including many designed to shift people out of personal passenger vehicles in favour of other modes of transportation. 

These could include massive investment in public transit – subways, commuter trains, buses – as well as the redesign of cities to allow for more trips to be taken via active modes such as bicycles or on foot. They could also include strategies such as telecommuting, a shift already spotlighted by the COVID-19 pandemic. 

“EVs really do reduce emissions, which are linked to fewer asthma-related ER visits in local studies, but they don’t get us out of having to do the things we already know we need to do,” says MacLean. “We need to rethink our behaviours, the design of our cities, and even aspects of our culture. Everybody has to take responsibility for this.” 

The research received support from the Hatch Graduate Scholarship for Sustainable Energy Research and the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada.

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