Montana coal country grapples with industry’s decline

COAL: Tribal nations in Montana’s coal country look to clean energy to help them weather the industry’s decline, but say a lack of resources hampers efforts to tap federal transition funding. (Montana Free Press)

‍

ELECTRIC VEHICLES: A report finds state and federal incentives and cheap leases are driving electric vehicle sales in Colorado, putting the state into second place nationally for EV adoption. (CPR)

‍

WIND:

• Oregon advocates say a lack of state mandates, tribal nation and local community opposition, and uncertainty around the presidential election prompted federal agencies to cancel a proposed offshore wind lease sale along the state’s southern coast. (OPB)
• A California community choice energy program signs on to purchase 147 MW from the redeveloped Gonzaga wind facility. (North American Windpower)

‍

OIL & GAS:

• Some states struggle to comply with rules attached to federal funds for plugging abandoned oil and gas wells, which they say is slowing progress on the $4.7 billion effort to remediate more than 130,000 old wells. (E&E News)
• An Alaska agency votes to spend up to $20 million on bids in an upcoming but unscheduled federal oil and gas lease sale in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. (Alaska Beacon)

‍

POLITICS: Rep. Mary Peltola, an Alaska Democrat, says she bases her approach to oil and gas drilling and mining projects on regional Native corporations’ positions on the issues. (Alaska Beacon)

‍

NUCLEAR: Amazon and utilities propose advanced nuclear reactors in Washington state to power the firm’s data centers in Oregon, which has a ban on new nuclear plants. (OPB)

‍

HYDROGEN: A California startup begins manufacturing advanced alkaline electrolyzers for industrial-scale green hydrogen production at its new Silicon Valley facility. (Bloomberg)

‍

SOLAR: A developer proposes a 425 MW solar-plus-battery storage installation to power an adjacent data center on a U.S. Navy base in California. (Data Center Dynamics)

‍

CLEAN ENERGY: A federal report finds California leads the nation in the number of clean energy jobs, Nevada and Colorado are in seventh and eighth place, respectively, and Wyoming is last. (Yale Climate Connections)

‍

UTILITIES: A report finds agencies have downgraded more than 100 utilities’ credit ratings due to wildfire hazard as insurance and mitigation costs have increased, leading to higher electricity rates. (Utility Dive)

‍

CARBON CAPTURE: California researchers develop a powder that sucks greenhouse gasses from the air and traps them in its microscopic pores for use in direct-air carbon capture technology. (Deseret News)

‍

COMMENTARY: California analysts say climate change-exacerbated heat waves, wildfires and extreme weather pose a greater threat to the outdated power grid than increasing levels of clean energy. (Utility Dive)

‍