Gas companies used supply crunch to get long-term contracts

OIL & GAS: U.S. gas companies have leveraged European supply crunches caused by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine to secure long-term liquified natural gas contracts, locking in emissions for decades. (Guardian)

ALSO: A Texas Gulf Coast liquified natural gas export facility prepares to resume commercial operations for the first time since a June fire. (Inside Climate News/​Texas Observer)

OFFSHORE WIND:
• The Biden administration releases its blueprint for building up the floating offshore wind industry, including forthcoming reports on building transmission from turbines to the West Coast. (E&E News)
• The White House announces it will auction off roughly 300,000 acres in the Gulf of Mexico for offshore wind development. (The Hill)
• A federal marine mammal commission says offshore wind projects aren’t responsible for recent whale deaths along the East Coast. (Asbury Park Press)

GRID:
• More than 585,000 people in Michigan and 118,000 in Illinois were without power late Wednesday as snow and ice storms socked the region. (CBS News)
• California installed 2.4 GW of battery capacity in 2022, accounting for more than half of the total installations in the U.S. (Scientific American)

UTILITIES:
• A software company helps utilities manage transmission growth and improvements with a grid resilience database that takes into account climate risks, equity concerns, and other factors. (Canary Media)
• Utility trade group Edison Electric Institute pushes Congress to pass energy permitting reform and urges federal and state regulators to revamp transmission rules. (Utility Dive)

SOLAR:
• Residential solar installer Sunrun deployed 275.4 MW of panels in the fourth quarter of 2022, surpassing SolarCity’s single-quarter record dating to 2015. (Bloomberg)
• A solar manufacturing trade group achieves its goals of incentivizing domestic panel production with the passage of the Inflation Reduction Act, and moves on to new ambitions. (Utility Dive)
• Virginia climate advocates develop a climate justice scorecard to measure social and environmental impacts of large-scale solar projects. (Energy News Network)

CLIMATE: A new analysis details the U.S. cities that are least at risk of extreme sea level rise, drought, and other climate disasters. (Washington Post)

CARBON CAPTURE:
• A Houston company announces plans to build a geothermal-powered direct-air carbon capture plant. (Washington Post)
• A growing number of farmers in Kansas and Missouri are adopting practices that allow them to sell carbon offset credits as an additional revenue source. (Flatland)

ELECTRIC VEHICLES:
• Luxury electric vehicle maker Lucid Motors say it upped its production rate by 50% in the last quarter of 2022, producing 7,200 cars the whole year. (New York Times)
• Elon Musk announces Tesla will open a new engineering headquarters in California, 15 months after the company’s high-profile departure to Texas. (KTLA)

ELECTRIFICATION: Heat pumps are more energy efficient than oil or gas furnaces even in cold temperatures, and can save homeowners on their utility bills, advocates say. (New York Times)

COMMENTARY: The U.S.’s climate migration is already beginning as residents who’ve lost their homes to weather disasters and wildfires retreat to seemingly safer areas, a journalist writes. (Guardian)