** Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett says in a confirmation hearing that she does not have “firm views” on climate change.
** President Trump signs an executive order committing the U.S. to a global tree-planting initiative, while an order to open a protected national forest to logging is still pending.
** The city of El Paso, Texas, unanimously reaffirms its opposition to a planned addition of a 228 MW natural gas generator to a local power plant.
** A North Dakota ethanol plant becomes the third facility in the state to drill a test well for potentially storing its carbon emissions.
** A trade group for filling stations has dropped the word “petroleum” from its name, signaling a shift in focus that includes biofuels.
** A federal judge approves the reorganization plan of California’s largest oil and natural gas producer, making it possible for the company to emerge from Chapter 11 bankruptcy three months early.
** A dispute over Ameren’s net metering program has left downstate Illinois solar installers and their customers with uncertainty over the financing of projects.
** Nearly $12 million in federal clean energy loans from the 2009 stimulus have gone unspent in Nevada, with the state writing off the debt as unrecoverable.
** The largest solar covered parking canopy at a Midwestern airport has been operating for two months in southern Indiana.
** A new Harvard study finds elevated levels of radiation downwind of fracking sites, with the largest increases found in Pennsylvania and Ohio.
** A Hawaii county files a lawsuit against 20 oil companies seeking compensation for the rising costs of climate change, including the threat of sea level rise.
** A federal agency is investigating complaints that the Chevrolet Bolt electric vehicle can catch fire.
** A Maryland-based power plant developer and operator with most of its 5.3 GW of generation assets in the Northeast is sold to an Israeli company.
** Shell and its offshore wind development partner seek to retrain some of the 9,000 workers to be laid off by the oil giant to jobs at the Mayflower Wind project in Massachusetts.
** The U.S. Energy Department awards $7 million to a Michigan cybersecurity company and others to deploy infrastructure that protects the electric grid from cyber attacks while electric vehicles are charging.