Trump’s energy-efficiency U-turn

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.

AFFORDABILITY

• President Donald Trump signs into law an appropriations package that increases annual funding for the federal Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program after the administration tried to eliminate the program last year. (Utility Dive)

• Pennsylvania Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick, one of two House Republicans to vote against the repeal of clean-energy tax credits last year, will introduce legislation to restore those incentives amid soaring energy costs. (E&E News)

• Republican and Democratic state lawmakers across the country are proposing legislation that aims to protect consumers from utility-bill increases caused by data-center development. (States Newsroom)

UTILITIES

• The Tennessee Valley Authority aims to build a massive 6.2 GW of new electricity generation, including several gas plants, to keep up with rising demand spurred by data center and population growth. (Utility Dive)

FOSSIL FUELS

• Coal-fired electricity saw a rare decline in China last year thanks to the country’s staggering clean-energy buildout, but proposals to build new coal power plants still surged to a record high. (Carbon Brief)

• Michigan launches first-of-a-kind lawsuit that accuses four oil-and-gas giants and a major U.S. oil lobbying firm of behaving like a ​“cartel” to impede both the energy transition and public knowledge of the perils of climate change. (The Guardian)

• German Chancellor Friedrich Merz embarks on a three-day trip to Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates in search of new energy deals that can reduce the country’s reliance on liquefied natural gas from the increasingly erratic United States. (E&E News)

• As data centers look to bypass long wait times to connect to the grid by building their own energy, a whopping 75% of projects aim to get that on-site power from natural gas. (Axios)

CLEAN ENERGY

• The Trump administration is delaying hundreds of onshore wind and solar projects on both public and private lands, threatening to exacerbate the ongoing energy-affordability crisis by constraining electricity supply. (New York Times)

• A GOP pollster finds that 51% of Trump-coalition voters support utility-scale solar projects, a number that jumps to 70% if the panels are made domestically. (Axios)

• Rooftop solar firms nationwide conduct layoffs and restructure ahead of what many expect to be a difficult year for the sector following the expiration of a key federal tax credit and other headwinds. (Reuters)