** Renewable energy, mostly solar and wind, are set to account for more than two-thirds of the new electricity generation capacity that the United States will install this year, the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) said in its latest inventory of electricity generators this week.
** The island nation of Palau says a tanker that recently loaded Venezuelan crude was using a false signal to disguise its identity, potentially putting the Pacific country in the crosshairs of U.S. sanctions. Palau is asking Venezuela to investigate the vessel that claimed last month to be the Ndros reported Bloomberg.
** A report released Wednesday by Green 2.0, an independent advocacy campaign that tracks racial and gender diversity within the environmental movement found that its leaders are mostly white older males.
** Asian utilities are snapping up prompt supplies of fuel oil — an emergency backstop for natural gas — as power demand surges across the region due to a winter freeze. Power generators in Japan such as Tohoku Electric Power Co. recently bought several cargoes of low-sulfur fuel oil for the purpose of direct burning, said traders who asked not to be identified.
** The Trump administration said Wednesday that it would slash millions of acres of protected habitat designated for the imperiled northern spotted owl in Oregon, Washington state and Northern California, much of it in prime timber locations in Oregon’s coastal ranges.
** More than 100 local elected officials across the West sent a letter today to Biden, Haaland and lawmakers on Capitol Hill, calling for them to reverse course on Trump’s energy dominance agenda reported POLITICO.
** The former governor of Michigan has been charged on two counts of willful neglect of duty stemming from the Flint, Mich., drinking water crisis.
** China’s total crude oil imports surged 7.3% in 2020 despite the coronavirus shock early in the year, with record arrivals in the second and third quarter amid plunging oil prices and expanding refineries, data showed on Thursday.
** Victims of last year’s Slater fire in northern California and southern Oregon sue Pacificorp for negligence, saying the utility’s failure to maintain its transmission lines is to blame for the blaze reported The Oregonian.
** Florida Power & Light Co., owned by renewables giant NextEra, announced Wednesday it shut down the last of its coal-fired power plants in Florida.