POWER PLANTS: The Minnesota Supreme Court rules that a planned $700 million natural gas plant in Superior, Wisconsin, doesn’t need further environmental review, reversing a lower court order. (Star Tribune)

ALSO: Local officials advance plans to demolish a former municipally owned coal plant in northern Indiana. (Pharos Tribune)

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SOLAR:
• Grid congestion caused by a flurry of community solar proposals south of the Twin Cities is hampering rooftop solar development in a southern Minnesota college town. (Energy News Network)
• Solar development is growing in Wisconsin, though the state’s installed capacity still pales in comparison to neighboring Minnesota. (WUWM)
• Iowa is poised to see an explosion of solar development, with roughly a dozen projects planned, as some landowners worry about the loss of farmland. (Des Moines Register, subscription)
• A recent study on state solar policies highlights attempts in Kansas to increase grid fees on rooftop solar customers. (PV Magazine)
• Advocates form a new solar cooperative buying program in a northern Ohio county. (WTOL)
• A new curriculum available to kindergarten through 8th grade students in Minnesota centers on the state’s solar industry. (Brainerd Dispatch)

PIPELINES: Environmental groups praise a ruling by Michigan regulators that it will consider climate impacts of Enbridge’s Line 5 tunnel proposal. (Bridge Michigan)

CLIMATE: As the Biden administration prepares a 50% emission-reduction goal by 2030, significant challenges remain to close the global “emissions gap” of announced targets and reductions needed to stem climate impacts. (Inside Climate News)

RENEWABLES:
• A planned 465 MW solar plus storage project near Madison, Wisconsin, would be the state’s largest renewable energy project. (Wisconsin State Journal)
• A small western Wisconsin city has made significant strides in developing renewable projects and purchasing credits to reduce its emissions. (Wisconsin Public Radio)

GRID: Supporters rally around Missouri legislation that would make it more difficult to develop transmission projects and also use eminent domain, potentially jeopardizing the Grain Belt Express project. (Missouri Times)

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WIND: County officials in Kansas distribute nearly $400,000 in revenue from a local wind project for local quality of life projects. (Blade-Empire)

COMMENTARY:
• Illinois took a “significant step” to help remediate coal ash pollution near some of the state’s best recreational areas, a columnist writes. (News-Gazette)
• An Illinois consumer advocate calls for the end of ratemaking policies that allow ComEd to automatically increase rates even after the company was involved in a bribery scandal. (Chicago Tribune)
• The Republican-led Minnesota Senate has been the primary roadblock to statewide climate action, a clean energy advocate says. (Minnesota Reformer)