The North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC) has released its 2023-2024 Winter Reliability Assessment, finding that “a large portion” of the North American grid is “at risk of insufficient electricity supplies during peak winter conditions.” Half of the United States, from the Midwest to the East Coast, is at an elevated risk of having insufficient electricity reserves, as well as Quebec and Saskatchewan.

This is largely due to generating capacity going offline when freezing temperatures occur in regions that do not typically experience them. This effect was demonstrated during Winter Storm Elliot, affecting the Eastern United States over the 2022 holidays. The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission and NERC also recently released a final report analyzing the storms and the lessons learned from it, calling for increased cold weather reliability standards for natural gas infrastructure. Read more at NERC.