Steel giant locks in fossil fuels

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.

GREEN STEEL

• Steel giant Cleveland-Cliffs plans to use up to $500 million from the Biden administration to refurbish coal-based steelmaking technology instead of investing in new blast furnaces to significantly cut an Ohio plant’s emissions. (Canary Media)

COAL

• The cost of the Trump administration’s orders to keep fossil fuel plants open past their retirement dates reaches $430 million, and more plants could be kept online before the end of the Trump administration. (Canary Media)

• Utility NIPSCO asks federal regulators to let it collect $38 million from ratepayers to cover the net costs of operating a large Indiana coal plant for three months that the Trump administration ordered to stay open. (Indiana Capital Chronicle)

GRID

• Wisconsin regulators take an unprecedented step and restart the yearlong approval process for a $1.4-billion power line, leaving the timeline for a major data center it’s meant to serve in limbo. (E&E News)

UTILITIES

• An initiative to form a municipally owned utility in Ann Arbor, Michigan, will go before city voters in November after gathering enough qualified signatures. (Michigan Public)

• A business-backed opposition group asks the Michigan Supreme Court to disqualify a ballot initiative seeking to prohibit large utilities from contributing to political campaigns. (MLive)

OIL & GAS

• Environmental groups challenge the Bureau of Land Management’s recent approval of three applications to drill fracking wells in the Wayne National Forest in Ohio, saying they violate a 2021 court order. (Athens County Independent)

• About 800 union workers have been locked out of BP’s Whiting refinery in northwestern Indiana without pay for four months amid an ongoing contract dispute with no signs of resolving. (WBEZ)

DATA CENTERS

• Voters soundly reject a developer’s request to rezone more than 500 acres for a data center in a referendum on the southeastern Michigan project. (MLive)

• We Energies’ 15-year service contract for a Microsoft data center includes a geographic requirement that power come from eastern Wisconsin or Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, despite state regulators’ order to remove the requirement that would limit the facility’s access to clean energy in other locations. (Wisconsin Watch)

CLEAN ENERGY

• A 33-story all-electric, geothermal-powered high rise taking shape in Chicago’s Fulton Market neighborhood could serve as a model for other projects. (Chicago Tribune)

BATTERIES

• Cabot Corp. cancels plans for a federally backed $50 million battery materials plant outside Detroit amid slowing EV demand. (Crain’s Detroit)

ELECTION

• A data center moratorium supporter and co-founder of the Sunrise Movement won the Democratic primary for a U.S. House seat over two better-funded, more moderate opponents as progressive candidates in several races outperformed their opponents. (E&E News)

OVERSIGHT

• Indiana Gov. Mike Braun (R) taps a Republican member of the Indianapolis City-County Council to fill a vacancy on the state’s Utility Regulatory Commission after a former member was fired this week. (Indianapolis Star)

NEW FROM CANARY

• The Pentagon’s wind farm blockade is over — for now — Dan McCarthy

• Why Trump’s claim that offshore wind is a security risk is​‘ludicrous’ — Sarah Shemkus

• Trump is blocking billions of dollars of grants that would fix the grid — Jeff St. John

• Nuclear startup Oklo splits its first atoms in test reactor — Alexander C. Kaufman