Suburban women become ​“EV ambassadors”

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ELECTRIC VEHICLES

• Virginia-based nonprofit Generation180’s ​“I’ll Drive What She’s Driving” initiative enters its second year using ​“EV ambassadors” focused on reaching women in suburbs where EVs are ideal for short trips and where many new-car buyers live. (Canary Media)

RENEWABLES

• Texas becomes the front line in a national divide among Republicans who want to block development of renewable energy and those who favor a free-market approach. (The Hill)

EMISSIONS

• Residents in Louisiana’s ​“Cancer Alley” fight a new state law requiring people who want to track violations of clean air laws to use expensive air-pollution monitors that meet strict Environmental Protection Agency standards, which critics say allow polluters to ​“silence the science.” (New York Times)

NUCLEAR

• Commonwealth Fusion Systems files for a conditional-use permit to build the world’s first commercial nuclear fusion plant in Virginia. (Richmond BizSense)

STORAGE

• ENGIE North America announces a deal with an investment management company to build 31 battery energy storage facilities to strengthen grids in Texas and California. (Houston Chronicle)

OVERSIGHT

• Georgia regulators prepare for hearings on Georgia Power’s long-term resource plan, which critics say relies too much on coal and natural gas and not enough on renewables. (Georgia Recorder)

• Early voting begins for two seats on Georgia’s utility regulatory board, with a focus on rising Georgia Power bills and a board where none of the five incumbents are actually Georgia Power customers. (Atlanta Journal-Constitution)

• The White House proposes cutting the Low-Income Home Energy Assistance Program, which provided utility assistance to nearly 60,000 families in West Virginia in 2022. (Mountain State Spotlight)

GRID

• New Orleans-area officials vow to investigate more than 100,000 outages among Entergy and Cleco customers over the weekend that appear to have resulted from high power demand and low supply as numerous power plants went offline. (Times-Picayune)

• West Virginia residents push back against a planned data center in a mountainous community that’s become a tourist and outdoor recreation destination. (NPR)

FOSSIL FUELS

• Residents of a seaside Texas town fret about becoming a ​“fenceline community” as the nearby Corpus Christi metro area rapidly has turned into America’s crude oil export capital. (The Xylom)

• American Electric Power subsidiaries​Appalachian Power and Wheeling Power announce fuel cost rate increases in West Virginia after reporting losses of $40.5 million from needing to burn extra coal to deal with oversupply. (Charleston Gazette-Mail)

• Texas officials report a surge in theft from oil and gas facilities in the Permian Basin. (Houston Chronicle)

• U.S. oil and gas companies eye the expanded cost and timeline of the Mountain Valley Pipeline — along with additional costs from tariffs, labor shortages, low oil prices, and the risk of legal snags — as they increasingly choose to purchase existing projects rather than build new ones. (Reuters)

SOLAR

• A subsidiary of South Korea’s OCI Holdings signs an agreement with battery company LG Energy Solution to build a 120 MW solar and battery system to supply San Antonio, Texas’ municipal utility. (Korea Times)

COMMENTARY

• Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis should sign legislation to streamline building permits to accelerate HVAC repairs, roofing jobs, and upgrades that can improve energy efficiency, writes the executive director of Polk County Young Republicans. (Florida Politics)

NEW FROM CANARY

• The U.S. Energy Department orders a Michigan coal plant to stay open past its May 31 retirement date and into at least late August, citing an ​“energy emergency,” Jeff St. John reports.

• States and environmental groups sue the Trump administration, alleging it unlawfully froze funding for a nationwide EV charger buildout, Lisa Sorg reports for Inside Climate News.