** Chevron Corporation announced Thursday a 2021 organic capital and exploratory spending program of $14 billion and lowered its longer-term guidance to $14 to $16 billion annually through 2025.
** EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler is quarantining after exposure to a person diagnosed with Covid-19. Wheeler had contact earlier this week with a masked person who has since tested positive, an agency spokesman said reported POLITICO.
** Operations have started on the middle portion of the China-Russia East natural gas pipeline, allowing natural gas from the Power of Siberia system in Russia to be transmitted to the smog-prone Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region in northern China.
** Former Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm is reportedly among three people being considered as President-elect Joe Biden’s domestic climate adviser according to E&E News.
** Four former ComEd officials plead not guilty to federal bribery charges as top Illinois Republican lawmakers call on House Speaker Michael Madigan to resign.
** Federal regulators approve the sale of the crippled Three Mile Island reactor to a company that will decommission the site over the objections of state officials.
** MarketWatch reports shares of Tesla TSLA are climbing, after Goldman Sachs upgraded the electric-car maker to a bullish buy rating, from neutral, and its price target to $780 from $455.
** SCANA and its successor Dominion Energy in South Carolina agree to pay a $25 million civil fine in a fraud case related to the defunct utility’s failed $9 billion nuclear plant expansion reported The State.
** A report by KTBS says Louisiana’s governor names a state mechanical engineering professor with a record of advocating for solar and renewable energy to lead a new state climate panel.
** The Albuquerque Journal reports a New Mexico technology firm is deploying the first neighborhood-level, solar and battery-powered microgrid in the U.S.
** Construction on a $79 million 52.5 MW wind generation project near Cheyenne, Wyoming is now complete according to North American Windpower.
** Boise, Idaho officials will require newly constructed homes with garages to have high-voltage circuits to accommodate electric vehicle charging reported the Idaho Press-Tribune.