Fake public comments stall clean energy

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

CLEAN ENERGY

• Ohio clean energy and good-government advocates want the state to take stronger action against entities that use seemingly fake public comments to oppose clean energy projects and support fossil fuels. (Canary Media)

COAL ASH

• Severe storms recently pushed the Vermilion River in east-central Illinois to near-record highs, raising the risk of erosion near a longtime coal ash storage site at a former coal plant. (Chicago Tribune)

GRID

• Indiana Gov. Mike Braun (R) asks state utility regulators to investigate NIPSCO after some Northwest Indiana customers experienced two-week outages following a powerful derecho this month. (Indiana Capital Chronicle)

• North Dakota regulators will hold public hearings next month on a $6 billion transmission line that would cover more than 240 miles and six counties in the state. (North Dakota Monitor)

PIPELINES

• Enbridge’s Line 5 leaked natural gas liquids in rural northern Wisconsin after a truck rolled over an excavation site, causing residents to evacuate nearby homes as a precaution. (Wisconsin Examiner)

DATA CENTERS

• Microsoft and Wisconsin ratepayer advocates oppose We Energies and ATC’s plan to allocate transmission costs to serve data centers, saying the proposal doesn’t adequately protect ratepayers from cost shifts. (Wisconsin Examiner)

UTILITIES

• An initiative to ban utility political contributions in Michigan will be on November ballots after the state Senate declined to hold a vote that could have passed it legislatively. (Michigan Public)

• Wisconsin clean energy groups say We Energies’ proposed 14% residential rate increase would disproportionately harm low-income residents already struggling from inflation. (Milwaukee Journal Sentinel)

• NIPSCO filed three separate rate increase applications totaling $88 million within the past two weeks while thousands of Northwest Indiana customers went without power for up to two weeks after a storm. (Chicago Sun-Times)

CARBON CAPTURE

• A North Dakota commission approves $205 million in loans for the proposed Project Tundra carbon capture project at a major coal plant. (North Dakota Monitor)

MICROGRIDS

• Ameren Illinois and Illinois State University partner to develop a microgrid-focused learning lab as a workforce development opportunity. (Daily Energy Insider)

COMMENTARY

• Ohio’s energy policy that favors fossil fuels over renewable energy encourages data centers to go with natural gas for behind-the-meter generation instead of wind or solar, an energy policy analyst writes. (Ohio Capital Journal)