UTILITIES: Climate advocates in Boulder, Colorado are divided over whether to continue with a costly municipalization effort or accept a deal from Xcel Energy; voters will decide the issue next week. (Energy News Network)

ALSO:
• Colorado regulators last week said they don’t have jurisdiction to determine an appropriate exit fee for co-ops seeking to exit their contracts with Tri-State Generation and Transmission. (Mountain Town News)
• Rocky Mountain Power’s president and chief executive officer says the utility is “leading in the West to decarbonize the grid.” (Deseret News)
• A new PG&E proposal would see residential ratepayers pay a smaller share of the utility’s costs than they currently do while small businesses and farmers would pay substantially more. (Bakersfield Californian)

CALIFORNIA: PG&E tells a federal judge there was no decision to leave a power line energized where the deadly Zogg Fire ignited last month. (Courthouse News Service)

COAL:
• Idaho Power plans to end its agreement with a Nevada coal plant three years early, and will stop using coal entirely by 2030. (Idaho Statesman)
• A University of Wyoming energy economics and public policy expert says that though the threat from climate change was real enough a decade ago, no one could have predicted how fast and far Powder River Basin coal would fall. (Gillette News Record, subscription)

PUBLIC LANDS:
• A federal court will allow the Bureau of Land Management to reconsider the climate impacts of giving oil and gas developers access to public lands across five states. (E&E News, subscription)
• A new high-level Interior Department appointee has a history of public comments reflecting a white supremacist viewpoint, including accusing social justice protesters of “anti-white racism.” (HuffPost)

ELECTRIC VEHICLES: Four California community choice aggregators join with the state’s Electric Vehicle Infrastructure Project to invest $65 million in electric vehicle charging infrastructure programs. (Green Car Congress)

GEOTHERMAL: A Nevada community continues to oppose a proposed geothermal project to be built on both federal and privately-held land. (Reno Gazette-Journal)

STORAGE: An exploration of long duration energy storage explains why the first major request for such projects by a coalition of California community choice aggregators is significant. (Greentech Media)

CLIMATE: Oregon’s Supreme Court last week ruled against two young plaintiffs who argued the state hasn’t done enough to fight climate change. (Oregonian)

COMMENTARY:
• Three Colorado county officials say Tri-State Generation and Transmission is holding counties back from reaching carbon-reduction goals. (Daily Sentinel)
• A climate and energy scientist says California policymakers, regulators, researchers, and energy suppliers will need to work together to ensure that the state’s expectations of energy storage technology are realized. (Union of Concerned Scientists)
• The head of an Arizona technology trade group says the state must get on a fast-track toward modernizing its energy rules to be a leader in clean energy. (Arizona Capitol Times)
• Indigenous leaders make the case for a Native American to lead the Interior Department: “Indian Country has so much to offer the entire nation when it comes to collaborative resource management, climate policy, and environmental policy.” (Thomson Reuters Foundation)

Lisa is a Lenape and Nanticoke Native American freelance journalist, editor and writer currently based in the U.K. She has more than two decades’ experience working in corporate communications and print and digital media. She compiles the Western Energy News daily email digest. She has a bachelor’s degree in journalism from Temple University; her specializations include data journalism and visualization. She is a member of the Native American Journalists Association, Investigative Reporters & Editors, Society of Professional Journalists, and the National Union of Journalists (U.K.).