CLIMATE:
• U.S. officials will announce a plan for decarbonizing the economy by 2050 during a climate summit in Morocco next month. (Bloomberg BNA)
• New York’s Supreme Court orders ExxonMobil to produce documents related to an investigation into whether the company concealed risks from climate change. (Washington Post)
COAL:
• The federal government gives $28 million in grants to more than a dozen states to aid workers displaced from the coal industry and fund initiatives to diversify local economies. (Reuters)
• A federal judge rules that coal particles that fall into waterways from passing trains are a type of pollution under the Clean Water Act, opening the door for a lawsuit against BNSF Railway in Washington state. (Associated Press)
• A West Virginia University professor who testified before a U.S. Senate subcommittee about stimulating the coal industry says West Virginia needs more innovation and renewable energy – not talk about the “war on coal.” (West Virginia Record)
• The federal government is giving $790,000 to the University of Utah so it can test the feasibility of transforming coal into a carbon fiber material. (Deseret News Utah)
COAL ASH:
• Hexavalent chromium found in wells near Duke Energy’s coal-ash ponds in North Carolina came from naturally occurring sources, not the ponds, according to a new study from Duke University. (Charlotte Business Journal)
• Georgia adopts new rules requiring coal ash storage facilities to be permitted and undergo groundwater monitoring, but environmental advocates say they don’t go far enough. (Atlanta Business Chronicle)
OIL & GAS: A new report that shows Exxon’s annual revenue is down by 45 percent and its long-term debt has quadrupled suggests the company is experiencing an “irreversible decline,” according to one expert. (CNN Money)
SOLAR:
• A California-based residential solar company will provide home energy storage that uses technology from LG Chem, the world’s largest automotive battery supplier. (Los Angeles Times)
• Developers say initial response to Project Sunroof, which uses aerial images from Google Earth to calculate any roof’s solar energy potential, has been encouraging. (Reuters)
• A California-based company is choosing a site in Nevada for what could be the world’s largest solar power plant, with a capacity of 2,000 megawatts. (Engineering News-Record)
WIND:
• Charlotte-based Duke Energy will remotely oversee operations at the country’s first offshore wind farm off Rhode Island. (Charlotte Business Journal)
• Rotor blades fracture on two wind turbines that were recently installed in Michigan. (Reuters)
• Nearly a dozen states generated at least 10 percent of their electricity from wind farms in 2015, with Iowa leading at 31 percent wind power, according to government data. (Denver Business Journal)
• Outdated wind farms built in the 1980s and 1990s are ideal sites for “repowering” with modern technologies. (Utility Dive)
ELECTRIC VEHICLES:
• The country will save $21 billion in healthcare and climate-related costs by 2050 if electric vehicles account for all new sales and make up 65 percent of the cars on the road, according to a new study. (Wired)
• Tesla turns a profit for the first time in years, earning $22 million in the third quarter of 2016. (Vox)
• Kansas regulators raise objections to a utility’s plan to build out electric vehicle charging stations, saying the proposal is anti-competitive and would require customers to subsidize a handful of EV drivers. (Midwest Energy News)
ADVOCACY: A grassroots organization in Kentucky is writing its own clean power plan for the state. (ClimateWire)
UTILITIES:
• More than half of all households in the country will have a smart meter installed by the end of the year, reaching a total of 70 million smart meters, according to a new report. (Greentech Media)
• Small independent power producers in Michigan are joining forces to fight a major utility’s plan to pay them less for their electricity. (Midwest Energy News)
COMMENTARY: Energy efficiency and renewable power are trending toward ubiquity. (Greentech Media)