Wyoming’s Carbon County goes all in on wind power

CLEAN ENERGY: Wyoming’s Carbon County — historically a large coal, oil and gas producer — embraces an under-construction 3,000 MW wind power facility and associated transmission project. (Wyoming Public Radio)

ALSO:
• A Colorado ski area teams up with an outdoor industry climate advocacy group to lobby for federal legislation aimed at expediting transmission line permitting. (Aspen Daily News)
• A federal report finds a handful of Western states lead the nation for the number of solar and wind-related jobs per capita. (Canary Media)

SOLAR: A New Mexico county approves a $275 million industrial revenue bond for a proposed 1,100-acre solar installation that would provide power to a Facebook data center. (Rio Rancho Observer)

UTILITIES: Southern California Edison pays $22 million to settle federal claims that the utility’s equipment sparked the 2016 Rey Fire in southern California.
(KTVZ)

COAL:
• A trial begins today pitting the developer of a proposed coal export terminal in Oakland, California, against the city and environmentalists looking to block the facility. (Mercury News)
• A New Mexico Supreme Court ruling blocking PNM from transferring its shares of a coal plant to another operator raises questions about the facility’s future. (Albuquerque Journal)

OIL & GAS: Republican U.S. congressmen from Arizona introduce a bill that would void the Biden administration’s ban on new oil and gas leases around Chaco Culture National Historical Park in New Mexico. (KNAU)

ELECTRIFICATION: Colorado regulators advance a proposal to ban gasoline-powered lawn equipment sales in the urban Front Range by 2025. (Greeley Tribune)

GRID:
• A utility industry report predicts the Northwest’s electricity demand will increase by nearly 25% in the coming decade, primarily driven by data centers and semiconductor manufacturing. (OPB)
• Near-record high temperatures predicted for the Southwest this week are expected to strain power grids. (Bloomberg)
• The U.S. Energy Department awards California $67 million for power grid upgrades aimed at making the infrastructure more resilient to extreme weather. (Bay City News)

BATTERIES: San Diego Gas & Electric brings 171 MW of battery energy storage installations online in southern California. (Energy Storage News)

MICROGRIDS: San Diego begins construction on the first of eight planned microgrids aimed at reducing costs, greenhouse gas emissions and outages. (Fox 5)

CRITICAL MINERALS: The Biden administration says it will issue a fast-tracked permitting decision by September 2026 for a proposed zinc and manganese mine in southern Arizona. (Tucson Sentinel)

COMMENTARY: A California editorial board says a new all-electric subdivision equipped with solar-plus-storage ​“offers a glimpse of the zero-emission future we should be hurtling toward.” (Los Angeles Times)