** A draft study led by Columbia University climate scientist James Hansen suggests that the recent rise in temperatures doesn’t come from greenhouse gases at all, but from the reduction in sulfate aerosols since the early-2000s.
** In the final hours of their spring session last week, lawmakers approved a controversial measure that would give existing power companies in downstate Illinois, notably Ameren Illinois, the first crack at installing new transmission lines.
** As California grapples with how to deal with heat waves made more intense by climate change, schools in the state may soon have to come up with plans for cooling down outside play areas by planting more trees and replacing surfaces like asphalt that swelter on hot days.
** Tesla Inc has doubled discounts on some already made new Model 3 electric cars and offered discounts on the Model Y and others in its U.S. inventory to entice buyers amid economic uncertainty, rising competition and the upcoming redesign of its mainstay model.
** Toyota will invest another $2.1 billion in an electric and hybrid vehicle battery factory that’s under construction near Greensboro, North Carolina. The plant will supply batteries to Toyota’s huge complex in Georgetown, Kentucky, which will build Toyota’s first U.S.-made electric vehicle, a new SUV with three rows of seats.
World
** OPEC+ will be grappling with a divided oil market when it meets this weekend. On one side, global oil inventories are shrinking as the alliance’s latest production cuts take effect. On the other, disappointing Chinese economic indicators and fears of a US recession have emboldened bearish speculators.
** OPEC hasn’t invited reporters from three major news organizations to cover the group’s meetings this weekend in Vienna. As of Wednesday evening, nobody from Bloomberg News had received an invitation. Journalists from the Reuters news agency and the Wall Street Journal were also denied invitations, according to people familiar with the matter.
** Colombia’s Cano Limon-Covenas pipeline was bombed by unknown actors, operator Cenit said in a statement on Tuesday, prolonging the suspension of pumping crude between oil fields in the country’s northeast and the Caribbean coast, where the oil is exported.
** Brazil’s state-controlled oil giant Petrobras is capturing and storing a growing amount of carbon dioxide below the seabed in a strategy that helps it boost oil and natural gas production. It also calls it green.
** American officials are negotiating a deal to help Turkmenistan curb its vast methane emissions, potentially sealing a major breakthrough in the global fight against climate change and notching a diplomatic coup for President Joe Biden.
** Toyota debuts hydrogen-fueled Corolla race car as auto racing begins shift away from gas guzzlers.
** The Indian government will not consider any proposals for new coal plants for the next five years and focus on growing its renewables sector, according to an updated national electricity plan released Wednesday evening. The temporary pause in the growth of the dirty fuel was hailed by energy experts as a positive step for a country that is currently reliant on coal for around 75% of its electricity.
** Inspections of Norway’s offshore gas pipelines after the Nord Stream blasts found nothing suspicious, an executive at energy major Equinor told Reuters, in the first official word on the security sweep.
