Arizona utilities consider new nuclear reactors

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NUCLEAR

• Arizona’s largest utilities team up to explore the feasibility of developing new small modular and conventional nuclear reactors in the state, including at retiring coal plants. (KAWC)

• Residents of a northwestern Colorado community push back on a proposed nuclear waste repository aimed at replacing retiring coal plants and mines. (KUNC)

UTILITIES

PacifiCorp wages a legal and political campaign aimed at reducing its financial liabilities for wildfires sparked by its equipment. (Willamette Week)

SOLAR

• A New Mexico county planning commission approves the contested Rancho Viejo 96 MW solar-plus-storage project proposed near Santa Fe after months of heated debate. (KSFR)

• A New Mexico town asks regulators to weigh in on how the state’s largest utility should allocate a community solar project’s costs. (New Mexico Political Report)

• Wyoming lawmakers fail to advance a bill that would have allowed utilities to slash net metering compensation for rooftop solar. (Wyoming Tribune Eagle, PV Magazine)

CLEAN ENERGY

• A firm seeks Wyoming regulators’ approval of a proposed 46,000 acre wind project to power a planned hydrogen production facility. (Douglas Budget)

• New Mexico lawmakers advance ​“green amendment” legislation that would establish a clean and healthy environment as a constitutional right, but clean energy firms oppose it. (Source NM; E&E News, subscription)

FOSSIL FUELS

• New Mexico lawmakers advance a bill that would ban new oil and gas wells within one mile of public schools. (Santa Fe New Mexican)

• A federal lawmaker from Arizona introduces legislation that would rescind a Biden-era oil and gas drilling ban on federal land around Chaco Culture National Historical Park in northern New Mexico. (Navajo-Hopi Observer)

• Advocacy groups file a lawsuit accusing the federal Bureau of Land Management of violating environmental laws by approving 25 new oil and gas wells in California’s San Joaquin Valley. (KCRA)

• A firm begins operating the world’s second largest conveyor belt to haul hydraulic fracturing sand from a Texas facility to Permian Basin oil and gas operations in New Mexico. (Texas Monthly)

CLIMATE

• Hawaii lawmakers advance ​“green fee” legislation that would increase hotel room taxes to help pay for climate change mitigation and resilience projects. (Hawaii Tribune-Herald)

• The Trump administration terminates the fledgling and underfunded Biden-era American Climate Corps, but independent programs under it will continue largely unaffected. (Los Angeles Times)