** The incoming Trump administration plans to shrink two national monuments in Utah shortly after taking office, which will open hundreds of thousands of acres of federal land to oil and gas drilling and uranium and coal mining.
** The Biden administration plans to release a blueprint for an additional 200 GW of nuclear power by 2050, a proposal that has bipartisan support and is likely to survive the incoming Trump administration.
** West Virginia Attorney General-elect John “J.B.” McCuskey promises to challenge U.S. EPA policies and support Donald Trump’s plans to undo climate initiatives.
** A Washington state grand jury charges two residents with violating federal pollution laws by smuggling $33 million worth of illegal devices designed to override truck emissions controls and selling them online.
** A natural gas utility with more than 2 million customers in Arizona, Nevada and parts of California is being fined $2 million by regulators in Arizona over concerns about piping that is known to degrade in the heat.
** The U.S. government’s highway safety agency is investigating complaints that engines can fail on as many as 1.4 million Honda and Acura vehicles.
** Former Ohio House Speaker Larry Householder, who is serving a 20-year prison sentence for his role in a bribery scheme involving FirstEnergy, plans to ask Donald Trump for clemency.
World
** The president of Azerbaijan, host of this year’s U.N. climate summit, lashed out at Western critics of his country’s oil and gas industry on Tuesday. Speaking in his keynote address at the COP29 climate summit, where nearly 200 nations are negotiating global action on climate change, President Ilham Aliyev described his country as a victim of a “well-orchestrated campaign of slander and blackmail”.
** Oil and gas major Shell on Tuesday won an appeal against a Dutch landmark ruling that required it to accelerate carbon reduction efforts, dealing a blow to campaigners who have turned to legal channels to pursue climate action.