GRID: Experts say it is increasingly urgent to prepare the grid for climate change, and extreme weather events in California and Texas show the risks and possible solutions. (Los Angeles Times)

ALSO:
• More than 165,000 ratepayers of Oregon’s two largest utilities remain without electricity and heat due to the state’s “catastrophic” winter storms. (KGW)
• Colorado Springs Utilities sets a new record for power consumption on a winter day, with ratepayers consuming 16,621 MWh of electricity on Sunday. (Colorado Springs Gazette)
• Experts note that California’s power outages have been much smaller in scale than the situation in Texas. (San Francisco Chronicle)
• Montana lawmakers use a 30-minute outage at a rural cooperative to attack renewable energy, despite wind energy playing only a small rule in the Texas grid crisis. (Montana Standard)
• Colorado U.S. Rep. Lauren Boebert is among Republicans falsely blaming renewable energy for Texas’ power outages.  (The Guardian) 

COAL: Officials in a Colorado county are concerned about the possible early closure of the coal-fired Comanche 3 power plant, citing concerns about the loss of high-paying jobs. (KRDO)

CLIMATE: A Nevada County adopts a sustainability and climate action plan aiming for net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. (Las Vegas Review-Journal)

EFFICIENCY: Colorado lawmakers are considering levying fines on businesses unable to meet energy efficiency standards as a means to generate revenue for the state. (CBS Denver)

OIL & GAS: New Mexico’s oil and gas industry opposes a state senate bill that would place a four-year moratorium on new fracking permits. (Carlsbad Current-Argus)

PUBLIC LANDS: The Bureau of Land Management postpones a Wyoming oil and gas lease sale planned for March. (WyoFile)

UTILITIES:
• A Nevada Senate committee is set to consider a bill today that would revise the reasons for and amounts of fines the state’s utility regulator can impose on utility companies. (Sierra Nevada Daily)
• A Platte River Power Authority spokesperson says the utility will not compromise system reliability in working towards its goal of 100% non-carbon generation by 2030. (Daily Camera)

WASTE-TO-ENERGY: A commercial renewable energy solutions company will convert waste from two Southern California landfills to electricity, enough to power 3,000 homes. (Renewable Energy Magazine)

WIND: The disposal of wind turbine blades in Powder River Basin coal pits could give some coal companies an opportunity to make money while meeting land reclamation obligations. (Gillette News Record, subscription)

COMMENTARY:
• A Nevada state lawmaker advocates for a bill they are sponsoring aiming to guarantee responsible energy planning and prevent wasteful spending by gas companies. (Nevada Independent)
• A Sunrun official and a state policy expert say distributed energy resources are key to solving the problems of the centralized grid at the state level. (Greentech Media)

Lisa Ellwood

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.).