Oregon’s efficient rebuilds

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

• PacifiCorp agrees to pay $575 million to settle federal government lawsuits related to the utility’s alleged role in sparking six wildfires in Oregon and California in 2020. (OPB)

• New Mexico Attorney General Raúl Torrez says the state’s largest utility may have violated state law by selling $400 million worth of stock to a Blackstone affiliate without regulators’ approval. (Albuquerque Journal)

• Idaho Power sells its 20,000-customer Oregon service area to Oregon Trail Electric Cooperative for $154 million. (Idaho Business Review)

• A Democratic California lawmaker introduces legislation that would create an expedited process for San Francisco and other cities to break away from Pacific Gas & Electric and form their own public utilities. (CBS News)

EFFICIENCY

• Observers say Oregon’s ​“carrot-not-stick” policies encouraging and incentivizing victims of the 2020 Labor Day fires to rebuild energy-efficient and climate-resilient homes should serve as a model for other states grappling with natural disasters. (Canary Media)

CLEAN ENERGY

• Wyoming legislation that would have exempted plug-in solar panels from state-level regulation dies in committee after utilities pushed back on safety concerns. (WyoFile)

• Hecate Energy sells rights to its planned 2,000 MW Cereza solar-plus-storage project on the federal Hanford site in Washington state to Savion. (Olympian)

DATA CENTERS

• A Democratic California lawmaker calls on Imperial County supervisors to halt a contested data center project and release more information on the facility’s power and water use. (KPBS)

COAL

• Environmental groups prepare to file a lawsuit seeking to block the Trump administration’s rollback of Biden-era mercury air toxics standards that could have forced the Colstrip coal plant in Montana to shut down. (Montana Free Press)

• Wyoming’s coal industry says the Trump administration revoking Biden-era mercury air toxics standards is unlikely to affect Powder River Basin mines, which mostly serve facilities that already comply with the rules. (WyoFile)

OIL & GAS

• Oregon lawmakers consider legislation that would require bulk oil and liquid fuel terminals to prove they can pay for disaster response, cleanup, and recovery. (Oregonian)

• Republican U.S. House lawmakers launch an investigation into advocacy groups’ efforts to block the Willow oil and gas drilling project on Alaska’s North Slope, claiming they use ​“ethically dubious sue and settle tactics.” (E&E News, news release)

• The Trump administration opens 2.1 million acres of previously protected federal land in Alaska to new mining claims and oil and gas drilling, drawing advocates’ criticism. (news release)

• Seismologists find earthquake frequency in the Permian Basin has spiked by as much as 700% over the last decade, and attribute most of the increase to oil and gas drilling and wastewater reinjection. (News-Sun)

• The federal Bureau of Land Management seeks public input on 32 proposed oil and gas leases covering 21,181 acres in southern and northern New Mexico. (news release)

GRID

• Las Vegas police investigate a man who rammed his car into an electrical substation in southern Nevada as a ​“terrorism-related event.” (Associated Press)

• A judge sentences a Washington state man to one and a half years in federal prison for sabotaging an electrical substation in Oregon. (Oregonian)

NUCLEAR

• Energy Northwest brings its Columbia nuclear plant in Washington state back online after a six-day shutdown for unexpected repairs. (Seattle Times)

• Oregon lawmakers consider legislation that would direct the state’s energy department to study the pros and cons of developing and deploying advanced nuclear reactors. (SightlineU308)