Winter storm knocks out power to 1 million-plus households

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GRID

• Winter Storm Fern knocks out power to more than a million customers across the U.S., with outages concentrated in Louisiana, Mississippi, and Tennessee. (Politico)

• Texas’ independent power grid seems to have remained stable throughout a massive winter storm. (Texas Tribune)

• Texas regulators consider whether to approve Oncor Electric’s proposal to build a high-voltage transmission line near Dinosaur Valley State Park, which has prompted a debate about grid upgrades driven by data centers, cryptocurrency mines, population growth, and the electrification of the oil and gas industry. (Inside Climate News)

FOSSIL FUELS

• The Trump administration has sped permitting for pipelines and rolled back environmental regulations in a bid to drive down oil prices, but Texas oil companies are still laying off workers and idling drilling rigs as they see shrinking profits. (Houston Chronicle)

• Kentucky Power customers are stuck paying for improvements and ongoing maintenance to an aging, 1,560 MW coal-fired power plant in West Virginia that likely will remain open well beyond its planned retirement date in 2028. (Mountain Eagle)

• Houston oil entrepreneurs, executives, and operators look for ways to take advantage of Venezuela’s crude reserves. (Reuters)

• New Mexico sues three Texas oil executives over an alleged scheme to take revenue from hundreds of oil and gas wells while shifting the cost of capping and cleaning up the wells to state taxpayers. (ProPublica/​Capital and Main)

• Texas records roughly 2,200 new orphan oil wells during 2025, pushing the state total to more than 11,000 and breaking a 20-year record. (Houston Chronicle)

SOLAR

• A network of New Orleans churches and community centers are installing solar panels and backup battery systems to create ​“resilience hubs” for residents in Louisiana, which is home to the longest average power outages in the U.S. (Faith and Leadership)

• Virginia clean energy advocates push back against Dominion Energy’s proposal to change net metering rules for new solar customers and credit them less. (Williamsburg Yorktown Daily)

EMISSIONS

• Virginia Democrats move to rejoin the multi-state Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, leading to a partisan argument over the carbon market’s costs and benefits. (Virginian-Pilot, Inside Climate News)

DATA CENTERS

• A group closely tied to data center developers spent at least $700,000 in digital marketing touting the job and revenue benefits of the industry in Virginia, spotlighting the emerging community backlash against data centers and their appetite for energy and water. (Grist)

• An Alabama city council approves a zoning change to allow a hyperscale data center at the site of a World War II-era munitions plant. (Inside Climate News)

• An analysis finds the growing data center sector could make up nearly 3% of Texas’ water use by 2030, even as swaths of the state face extreme drought and shortages. (Houston Chronicle)

ELECTRIC VEHICLES

• Supply chain logistics company NFI launches a fleet of 10 electric trucks in Virginia’s Hampton Roads region as part of a partnership with Meta to reduce carbon emissions in heavy industry. (WHRO)

OVERSIGHT

• Trump’s aggressive approach to promoting fossil fuels, pushing for lower gasoline prices, and attacking renewables have created both winners and losers in the energy industry since he took office. (Houston Chronicle)