California gov. candidate touts free-power hour

This roundup of energy news headlines comes from our Western Energy News newsletter. Sign up to get it in your inbox every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday morning.

UTILITIES

• Democratic California gubernatorial candidate Xavier Becerra proposes offering free electricity to low-income residents for two hours during the middle of the day, saying it could encourage energy use when solar power is most abundant. (KGO)

• California regulators order Pacific Gas & Electric to pay $22 million in shareholder funds for its role in the 2022 Mosquito Fire in northern California. (KRON)

• Black Hills Energy proposes a $5.1 million rate hike for its northeastern Wyoming service area that would raise the average customer’s bill by about $32 per month. (WyoFile)

GRID

• The U.S. Energy Department halts designation of the Southwestern Grid Connector Corridor and two other Biden-era national transmission corridors, saying they were ​“a means to advance their Green New Scam agenda and ​‘accelerate decarbonization.’” (E&E News, news release)

• Xcel Energy asks the Colorado Supreme Court to weigh in on an eminent domain dispute that is preventing the utility from connecting two new wind facilities in the eastern part of the state to the grid. (Utility Dive)

• A federal energy planning council says Northwestern states must add about 11 GW of new electricity generating capacity in the next five years to keep up with growing data center-driven demand. (OPB)

FOSSIL FUELS

• Xcel Energy blames unspecified supply chain delays for its failure to bring its Comanche 3 coal plant back online over a year after it was shuttered due to a mechanical failure. (CPR)

• California’s Coastal Commission votes to reject a proposal to hydraulically fracture 16 offshore oil and gas wells in the Santa Barbara Channel. (news release)

• California regulators vote to approve a petroleum company’s purchase of a 2,000-mile pipeline network that links Kern and Ventura County oil fields with Bay Area and Long Beach refineries. (E&E News)

• The federal Bureau of Land Management seeks additional public input on 113 proposed oil and gas leases covering 126,445 acres in Colorado, including contested parcels on the Roan Plateau. (Post-Independent, news release)

• A New Mexico advocate says oil and gas spills that contaminate water are concentrated in the northwestern corner of the state around Chaco Culture National Historical Park. (Source NM)

• New Mexico State Land Commissioner Stephanie Garcia Richard works to fortify an oil and gas drilling ban on 73,000 acres of state land around Chaco Culture National Historical Park as she nears the end of her tenure. (Santa Fe New Mexican)

CLEAN ENERGY

• Beverage firm Molson Coors begins construction on a solar array at its defunct coal mine in northeastern Colorado. (CBS News)

• Recurrent Energy secures $695 million in financing and tax equity for its 330-MW Cobalt solar facility under development near Blythe, California. (news release)

• ForeFront Power brings online an earth-mounted solar system at a California water treatment plant, saying it saves costs by foregoing steel racking and associated labor. (Solar Power World)

CARBON CAPTURE

• California advocates criticize state regulators for missing a deadline to adopt carbon sequestration rules and allowing a new carbon storage project to operate without them. (CalMatters)

BIOFUELS

• CO2 Sync brings online its wood-waste power generator and biochar production facility in Charleston, Utah. (Carbon Herald)