OIL & GAS: Minnesota regulators rip into gas utilities for their role in skyrocketing prices during February’s cold snap, saying it’s done lasting harm to the fuel’s reputation: “It has changed my worldview as to how natural gas fits into our energy [system] in Minnesota.” (Star Tribune)

ALSO:
• A Michigan researcher warns that, without good public policy, lower-income and minority communities could bear added financial burden as wealthier utility customers abandon gas and electrify their homes. (news release)
• Indigenous and environmental groups petition the federal government to require a supplemental environmental assessment for a proposed $700 million natural gas plant in northern Wisconsin. (WPR)
• North Dakota’s Board of University and School Lands argues in a legal brief that a new state law limiting the state’s ability to collect old oil and gas royalties still owed to the state is unconstitutional. (InForum)
• An oil company that waited more than five months to report the nation’s largest ever fracking wastewater spill in North Dakota agrees to pay more than $35 million in civil and criminal fines. (Associated Press)

PIPELINES:
• Wild rice is the lead plaintiff in a lawsuit filed by the White Earth Band of Ojibwe against the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources that seeks to block the Line 3 pipeline using the novel “rights of nature” theory. (Star Tribune)
• An Iowa man is convicted of unlawful assembly and obstructing a public right of way for his role in a Line 3 protest in June. (Park Rapids Enterprise)
• Indiana environmentalists raise concerns about a Kentucky company’s plan to build a gas pipeline under the Ohio River to bring out-of-state fuel to two proposed natural gas-fired power plants. (Indiana Environmental Reporter)
• A Missouri utility seeks a rehearing with the U.S. Court of Appeals to continue operating a St. Louis-area pipeline. (Missouri Times)

POLITICS: Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker expresses frustration with stakeholders over their inability to resolve differences in competing clean energy proposals and urges lawmakers to vote soon on a compromise. (Rockford Register Star)

OHIO: Ohio’s attorney general asks a judge to add two former FirstEnergy executives and former utilities commission chair Sam Randazzo as defendants in a state racketeering lawsuit. (Associated Press)

SOLAR:
• An Indiana city rebrands itself “the Solar City,” having installed 2.4 MW of solar at 24 community sites over the last four years. (Plain Dealer & Sun)
• A Des Moines, Iowa, school district installed more than 600 solar panels on an elementary school that now offset 70% of its energy costs. (We Are Iowa)
• A renewable developer is exploring an eastern South Dakota county as a possible location for a large solar power project. (WNAX)

ELECTRIC VEHICLES:
• The reaction from Iowa to President Biden’s new goal of seeing that half of all new vehicles are electric by 2030: What about biofuels? (Iowa Capital Dispatch)
• In Minnesota, auto dealers welcome Biden’s electric vehicle target, saying it will be a stretch but they are “all-in for the coming electric age.” (WCCO)

CLIMATE: Wisconsin’s Republican-led legislature is putting up roadblocks for implementing a state task force’s climate action plan. (Journal Sentinel)

COAL: A Wisconsin student union is among the surprising reuses of decommissioned coal plants as the country moves toward cleaner energy. (Bloomberg)

CLEAN ENERGY: Former Michigan governor and current U.S. Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm returned to the state Thursday to tout the Biden administration’s clean energy goals. (Oakland Press)