** The White House and Vice President Kamala Harris rolled out a plan on Monday for building out an electric vehicle charging network. A fact sheet the White House released on the plan relies heavily on the bipartisan infrastructure law and existing actions it has taken, but there are some new announcements as well.
** Toyota Motor Corp on Tuesday committed 8 trillion yen ($70 billion) to electrify its automobiles by 2030, half of it to develop a battery electric vehicle (BEV) line-up, as it looks to tap a growing market for zero-emission cars.
** Rolling blackouts may hit New England if there’s an extended cold snap this winter, as the regional power grid operator warns of a “precarious” situation due to snags in the natural gas supply.
** Two environmental organizations intend to sue the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, calling for a halt of operations for a pair of pipelines leading to a natural gas storage facility in Robeson County, North Carolina.
** California on Monday proposed reducing the rate at which homeowners can sell excess electricity from their rooftop solar panels into the grid, weakening a policy that has underpinned dramatic growth in the renewable energy industry for years.
** The Biden administration asks Great Lakes Indigenous tribes for input on upcoming treaty talks between the U.S. and Canada over the Line 5 pipeline.
** Pacific Gas & Electric’s top executive says the utility will unveil plans in February to bury 10,000 miles of power lines to curb wildfire risk in northern California.
** Rep. Ro Khanna, who led the House Oversight Environment Subcommittee’s probe into the oil and gas industry earlier this year, wants to end tax credits for carbon capture that is used to pump more oil out of the ground.
World
** OPEC on Monday raised its world oil demand forecast for the first quarter of 2022 and stuck to its timeline for a return to pre-pandemic levels of oil use, saying the Omicron coronavirus variant would have a mild and brief impact.
** The energy transition and the shift toward renewable energy have to be managed very carefully in order to prevent a surge in oil prices as energy demand continues to rise, according to Saudi Arabia’s finance minister.
** The European Union is planning a hard deadline to end long-term contracts to import natural gas as part of its green shift, a setback for top supplier Russia.