ELECTRIC VEHICLES:
• California is trying to boost sales of low-emissions vehicles by offering lower-income households bigger rebates on all-electric, plug-in hybrid and fuel-cell cars. (Los Angeles Times)
• Luxury car designer Henrik Fisker says he plans to team up with a major manufacturer to produce a mainstream, affordable electric car. (Los Angeles Times)

SOLAR:
• Questions about pricing and efficiency linger after Elon Musk’s presentation on SolarCity’s rooftop shingles. (Utility Dive)
• Massachusetts officials are drafting a new incentive proposal aimed at doubling the amount of installed solar across the state. (State House News Service)

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WIND:
• Amazon is commissioning a wind farm in Ohio that will generate 530,000 megawatt hours of energy annually to help offset the power needs of its cloud computing division. (Seattle Times)
• A wind developer in Vermont has promised to pay local residents over $1,100 a year if they vote to approve a local wind project. (Associated Press)

COAL: Bankrupt coal company Peabody Energy wires $1.8 million in overdue property taxes to resolve a dispute with a county in Colorado. (Denver Business Journal)

OIL & GAS:
• Oil drilling may have caused Southern California’s deadliest earthquake, in 1933, according to a recent study. (Los Angeles Times)
• General Electric is merging its oil and gas business with horizontal drilling juggernaut Baker Hughes to create the world’s second-largest oilfield services provider, producing $32 billion in annual combined revenue. (Reuters)

PIPELINES:
• A deadly pipeline explosion in Alabama forces Colonial Pipeline Co to shut down its main gasoline and distillates pipelines for the second time in two months. (Reuters)
• Dakota Access Pipeline protesters have raised at least $3 million to support their camp in North Dakota. (Associated Press)
• A United Nations group is investigating possible human rights abuses carried out by law enforcement officers against Dakota Access Pipeline protesters in North Dakota. (The Guardian)

POLLUTION: The owners and operators of an Illinois oil refinery that released pollutants into the Mississippi River must pay $125,000 and construct systems to better disinfect and clean wastewater from the refinery. (St. Louis Business Journal)

NUCLEAR: Retired nuclear plants are most often replaced by natural gas. (Greentech Media)

UTILITIES:
• 20 years later, the crafters of Pennsylvania’s deregulation bill reflect on its impact. (RTO Insider)
• New Mexico’s largest electric utility scraps plans to build an 80 megawatt natural gas plant and pipeline, saying energy demand is too low. (Santa Fe New Mexican)
• How a dispute over demand charges – a fixed fee based on a homeowner’s peak usage – has become central to the debate over energy legislation in Illinois. (Midwest Energy News)

COMMENTARY:
• Thanks to new technology, grid systems relying on 100 percent renewable energy increasingly look possible. (Forbes)
• With pipeline leaks and spills occurring almost daily, protesters are right to worry about the Dakota Access Pipeline polluting the Missouri River. (Planetsave)