** EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler says he believes forest management issues are a more significant factor than climate change in Western wildfires.

** LyondellBasell to cut Houston refinery staff by 10% on pandemic losses.

** Maine approves the largest procurement of clean energy in state history with the vast majority of projects awarded to solar developers.

**  Transco pays Pennsylvania nearly $1 million in fines and other assessments for environmental violations that occurred during construction of the Atlantic Sunrise pipeline expansion.

** An electric vehicle battery plant northeast of Atlanta plans to hire more than 1,000 skilled workers by the end of 2021 as it prepares for production.

** A new campaign ad for Sen. Mitch McConnell features coal miners who appeared in an ad for his Democratic opponent a year ago.

** At the annual meeting of the United Nations General Assembly, China’s President Xi Jinping pledged that the country will achieve “carbon neutrality before 2060,” marking a huge step in the global fight to keep the planet’s warming in check.

** On Tesla Inc.’s “Battery Day,” the company laid out its plan to build a $25,000 electric car and half its battery costs as soon as 2023, but the announcement left many skeptical of Tesla’s plans for incremental and longer-term technological advances after Chief Executive Elon Musk seemed to play up a blockbuster leap forward ahead of the event.

**  An AEP subsidiary will contribute $1.5 million to a political campaign by the city of Columbus encouraging voters to pass a renewable energy aggregation program.

** A county judge issues an injunction temporarily stopping PG&E’s removal of more than 260 trees in a Northern California city as part of its wildfire mitigation efforts.

** Xcel Energy tells Colorado regulators the company is not ready to electrify large numbers of gas-fueled compressor stations.

**  Des Moines, Iowa-based MidAmerican Energy is providing decommissioned wind turbine blades for research at the University of Tennessee to find ways to recycle the blades, reports the Casper Star Tribune. The goal is to reclaim glass fiber from the blades and make new products from it.