More than half of the U.S. and parts of Canada, home to around 180 million people, could fall short of electricity during extreme cold again this winter due to lacking natural gas infrastructure, the North American Electric Reliability Corp (NERC) said on Wednesday. In its 2023-24 winter outlook, the regulatory authority warned that prolonged, wide-area cold snaps threaten the reliability of bulk power generation and availability of fuel supplies for natural gas-fired generation. “Recent extreme cold weather events have shown that energy delivery disruptions can have devastating consequences for electric and gas consumers in impacted areas,” NERC said.