Today’s headlines: Senate reaches bipartisan permitting deal, and more

This roundup of U.S. energy news headlines is part of our Canary Media Daily newsletter. Sign up to get it in your inbox each morning.

PERMITTING

• Senate negotiators say they’ve reached a bipartisan deal on a permitting package to speed approvals for new energy projects in the U.S., and aim to release the text of the agreement this week. (Politico)

COAL

• Two months before the Trump administration began using emergency powers to force retiring coal plants to stay open, a top coal lobbyist sent a letter to Energy Secretary Chris Wright suggesting the strategy. (New York Times)

CLEAN ENERGY

• PJM Interconnection has declared a record number of energy emergencies this year, while California and Texas have declared zero — a difference that can be traced to the huge amounts of solar and batteries added in the latter states. (Bloomberg)

SOLAR

• The U.S. could unlock a significant amount of energy capacity simply by ​“repowering” aging solar farms with new, better-performing panels and adding batteries to the arrays, a new report argues. (Heatmap)

GRID

• A coalition that includes Google and Tesla publishes a proposal for how utilities should measure how much of the grid goes unused at specific times and locations, as states consider how to make more of the infrastructure they already have. (Latitude Media)
• Two companies, DG Matrix and TerraFlow Energy, are preparing to deploy what will be one of the first solid-state transformer architectures to power a high-performance computing cluster in the U.S. (Latitude Media)

TRANSPORTATION

• The Trump administration finalizes its plan to weaken fuel efficiency standards for new cars, dropping requirements from an average of 50.4 miles per gallon in model year 2031 to 34.9 miles per gallon. (New York Times)

CLIMATE LAWSUITS

• Supreme Court Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr., who owns stock in oil firms, will recuse himself next week when the court hears a major lawsuit that could determine whether oil companies face billions of dollars in potential liability for damages from climate change. (New York Times)