** The Biden administration announced Tuesday it will protect 28 million acres of public lands in Alaska, reversing a Trump administration effort to open them up to development. The move protects the lands from mining as well as oil and gas extraction.
** The number of publicly available electric vehicle (EV) chargers has doubled since Biden took office, the Biden administration said Tuesday. The Hill reported there are now 192,000 publicly available charging ports with approximately 1,000 new public chargers being added each week, the Energy Department said in a press release.
** Despite the ongoing global shift toward renewable energy, ExxonMobil, the largest oil company in the U.S., remains confident that the impacts of electric vehicles (EVs) on long-term oil demand will be limited. The company argues that even if every new car sold by 2035 were electric, global oil demand would still reach 85 million bpd, the same level seen in 2010, reported Zacks Equity Research.
** An environmental advocacy group called for former independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to be investigated regarding a resurfaced report in which his daughter, Kick Kennedy, said he cut the head off a dead whale.
** Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, will by 2027 power data centers using geothermal energy storage, according to a power purchase deal announced Monday.
World
** Bloomberg reports Libyan oil output dropped as authorities in the OPEC member’s east enforced a shutdown, escalating a crisis the United Nations warned runs the risk of collapsing the economy. Production at the El-Feel field in southwestern Libya has stopped, according to people familiar with the matter, while local operators are indicating they’ll gradually halt pumping nationwide.
** A Russian oil depot is ablaze after being hit with Ukraine drone attack. The Baza Telegram channel, which is close to Russia’s security services, said that three tanks were burning after two drones struck the depot. The attack comes while tanks were still on fire at another Rostovoil depot, in the Proletarsk district, some 10 days after the depot was attacked, Russian Telegram channels report.
** Ethiopia said it has more than doubled electricity production from its controversial mega-dam on the Blue Nile after two more turbines started operations. The multi-billion-dollar Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD), long a source of tensions with downstream nations Egypt and Sudan, is now generating 1,550 megawatts of electricity, GERD said in a post on X late Tuesday.
** Leading Chinese automaker BYD posted on Wednesday a 24.4 percent rise in net profit for the first half of 2024, boosted by continuing strong demand for electric cars in its home and overseas markets.