Electric school buses get another jumpstart

ELECTRIC VEHICLES: The Biden administration announces nearly $900 million for 500 school districts across the country to buy clean buses, most of them electric, in the latest round of Bipartisan Infrastructure Law funding. (Canary Media)

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ALSO: Electric vehicle charging companies see opportunity in Tesla’s Supercharger team layoffs, including by hiring former Tesla employees and building charging stations in lots whose owners previously planned to allow Superchargers. (E&E News)

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SOLAR:

• A company is training artificial intelligence to help identify community solar customers at risk of unsubscribing, and also to develop a more equitable screening alternative to credit scores. (Energy News Network)
• A Virginia city and county partner on a project to build solar facilities on defunct landfills. (Fredericksburg Free Press)

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POLITICS: The U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the American Petroleum Institute, which opposed the Inflation Reduction Act before its passage, are now preparing to defend it if former President Trump wins the election this fall. (Politico)

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WIND:

• Advocates wonder if offshore wind will ever take off in the U.S., where President Biden has pushed for new construction but conservative groups have increasingly opposed it. (Floodlight)
• Ørsted will pay New Jersey $125 million — or under half of what the developer had promised — for pulling the plug on two offshore wind projects. (Philadelphia Inquirer)

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ELECTRIFICATION: Helping lower-income Americans electrify their homes could dramatically reduce fossil fuel use and drive $2 trillion in avoided health and social costs by 2050, an energy efficiency group finds. (Canary Media)

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CLIMATE: The average person on Earth faced 26 more days of abnormal heat last year than they would’ve without human-caused climate change, a study finds. (New York Times)

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GRID:

• California’s grid operator approves a $6.1 billion plan to build 26 new transmission projects and greenlights Pattern Energy’s proposal to tie the SunZia line into the state’s power network. (E&E News)
• U.S. utilities are slowly deploying dynamic line ratings and other grid technologies that can increase power capacity without the need for new transmission lines. (Canary Media)
• Upgrading wires on high-voltage transmission lines across the U.S. could quickly and cheaply expand grid capacity and allow for more clean power, but some utilities hold out in favor of more profitable new construction. (Washington Post)

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OIL & GAS: ConocoPhillips announces it will acquire Marathon Oil in an all-stock transaction worth $22.5 billion. (news release)

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GEOTHERMAL: Utah’s geothermal industry says the federal Bureau of Land Management’s decision to defer 177,000 acres of energy leases until next year could imperil investments and development. (Deseret News)

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CARBON CAPTURE: Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker says he will sign legislation that bans carbon pipelines until federal regulators adopt new safety regulations and that create more extensive monitoring at storage sites. (Capitol News Illinois)

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