Hawaii youths sue the state over climate change

CLIMATE: Hawaii youths sue the state’s transportation department, claiming it’s violating their constitutional rights by not doing enough to stem greenhouse gas emissions. (Honolulu Star-Advertiser)

EFFICIENCY: Aspen, Colorado’s city council adopts strict energy-efficiency building codes requiring heat pumps and beefed up insulation on new homes and limiting energy spent on exterior heating. (Colorado Sun)

ELECTRIC VEHICLES: Tesla’s manufacturing facility expansion in Nevada is expected to trigger hundreds of millions of state tax abatements on top of the $1.3 billion in incentives the company already has received. (Nevada Current)

TRANSPORTATION:
• Phoenix, Arizona’s city council votes to spend up to $230 million over the next five years to purchase low- and zero-emission buses. (Arizona Republic)
• A California borax mine successfully tests fueling its haul trucks with renewable diesel produced from cooking oil and animal fats. (CIM Magazine)

SOLAR:
• New Mexico lawmakers advance a bill that would require new schools to be built with enough solar capacity to provide at least 51% of the facility’s energy. (NM Political Report)
• A California port obtains about 30% of its power from clean sources after bringing its share of a solar facility online. (Splash)

UTILITIES: A southern California clean power authority seeks developers to install solar-plus-storage projects in public buildings to provide backup power during outages. (Public Power)

OIL & GAS:
• New Mexico regulators say cold temperatures and downed equipment led oil and gas operations to flare and vent record high levels of methane and other associated gasses in December. (Capital & Main)
• California environmental justice advocates work to block the oil and gas industry’s efforts to overturn new state regulations. (Inside Climate News)
• Environmental, Indigenous and social justice organizations call on New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham to phase out oil and gas production by 2034. (news release)

COAL:
• A power plant in Wyoming is the nation’s only coal-fired facility that costs less to operate than new wind or solar replacements with equivalent output, an energy think tank finds. (Inside Climate News)
• New Mexico lawmakers consider a bill that would ensure the retired San Juan coal plant’s decommissioning is completed with minimal environmental impacts. (KRQE)

DIVESTMENT: A sustainable-economy research firm finds a Colorado public employees’ pension fund missed out on $2.7 billion over the last ten years by not divesting from fossil fuels. (Corporate Knights)

GEOTHERMAL: A startup successfully demonstrates its method for tapping geothermal power deep underground by drilling an 18,000 foot well in southwestern New Mexico. (Albuquerque Journal)

CARBON CAPTURE: New Mexico lawmakers advance a bill aimed at expediting carbon capture project permitting by letting the state approve sequestration wells before the federal government. (NM Political Report)