Vineyard Wind sending power to the grid

This roundup of energy news headlines comes from our Northeast Energy News newsletter. Sign up to get it in your inbox each Monday, Wednesday, and Friday morning.

OFFSHORE WIND

• Vineyard Wind, the offshore wind farm off Massachusetts, is now sending power to the grid from 17 of its planned 62 turbines, and another six are fully installed. (New Bedford Light)

• Equinor, the company behind New York’s Empire Wind project, takes a $955 million financial hit, blaming the Trump administration’s tariffs and animus toward offshore wind. (Reuters)

ELECTRIFICATION

• Most Massachusetts heat pump owners will have access to lower electricity rates this winter, and state regulators are considering even deeper discounts for heating seasons to come. (Canary Media)

• New York Gov. Kathy Hochul announces $200 million to help schools buy electric buses, but some officials say the money is just ​“a drop in the bucket” as school districts face a mandate to fully electrify their fleets by 2035. (Rochester First)

• Newton, Massachusetts, and its utility companies National Grid and Eversource enter into a ​“first of its kind” collaboration to plan the city’s transition away from natural gas, potentially creating a model for other communities to emulate. (Heatmap)

• A federal court in New York upholds the state’s ban on using natural gas in new buildings starting in 2026. (National Association of Home Builders)

RENEWABLES

• Maine seeks proposals for renewable energy developments that will provide up to 1,600 gigawatt-hours of power, giving bidders just two weeks to get their submissions in as the state aims to give selected projects time to begin construction before federal tax credits expire. (Canary Media)

• The country’s oldest continually operating museum — the Peabody Essex in Salem, Massachusetts — announces an agreement to meet the energy needs of its 23-building campus with renewable power. (Patch)

• Some Maine electricians find themselves idle as two major solar jobs are canceled in the face of the looming end of federal solar tax credits. (ABC7)

FOSSIL FUELS

• Activists pledge to fight any efforts to lift a longstanding ban on fracking in the Delaware River Basin as President Trump’s ongoing efforts to bolster fossil fuels raise questions about whether he could set his sights on the area. (Inside Climate News)

• The city council in Lowell, Massachusetts, looks for ways to promote sustainable alternatives to diesel fuel as a manufacturing facility in the city looks to expand its use of diesel-powered backup generators. (Lowell Sun)

STORAGE

• A Pennsylvania-based construction company proposes building Maine’s first pump hydro storage project in the western part of the state. (Bangor Daily News)

GRID

• A bipartisan group of 10 governors demands more oversight of grid operator PJM as recent auction results yielded record-breaking capacity prices that are likely to drive consumers’ bills even higher next summer. (New York Times)

CLIMATE

• Environmental justice and climate advocates sue New York over the state’s failure to launch a promised cap-and-invest program that would charge polluters for their carbon emissions and reinvest the proceeds in clean energy projects. (New York Focus)

NEW FROM CANARY 

• Chart: Public EV chargers are growing steadily in the US — Dan McCarthy

• Trump admin cancels $4.9B loan for biggest transmission line in US — Jeff St. John

• Powin fueled the US grid storage boom. Then the company crashed. — Julian Spector