** Kinder Morgan (KMI) reached a final investment decision (FID) Dec. 19 for its $1.4 billion Mississippi Crossing Project (MSX), as the company pushes forward with plans to move more natural gas to the Southeast. MSX will be a 206-mile, 42- and 36-inch pipeline with an initial capacity of up to 1.5 Bcf/d of natural gas, reported Hart Energy.
** A group of 16 states led by California and environmental groups dropped a lawsuit filed in 2022 that sought to block the U.S. Postal Service’s plan to buy mostly gas-powered, next-generation delivery vehicles. Since the lawsuit was filed, the Postal Service has shifted from its initial plan to buy 90% gasoline vehicles and 10% EVs to now planning to buy mostly EVs.
** As part of the Biden-Harris Administration’s Investing in America agenda, the U.S. Department of Energy announced up to $80 million is available through a new funding opportunity to spur advancements in the process to produce high-assay low-enriched uranium (HALEU).
** Xcel Energy proposes a $5 billion plan to upgrade its Colorado distribution grid to help it accommodate increasing numbers of rooftop solar installations, electric vehicles and heat pumps driving demand to levels “we haven’t seen since the advent of air conditioning.”
** Honolulu’s city council votes to ban wind turbines within at least 1.25 miles of homes and schools following pushback from some residents.
** Administrative judges find the federal Bureau of Land Management’s approval of a Utah uranium mine’s expansion near Bears Ears National Monument violated environmental laws.
** South Dakota regulators approve a settlement agreement allowing a gas utility to raise rates for the first time since 2011, as the utility cited rising operational costs and 13 years of infrastructure investments.
** If all goes to plan, Virginia will be the site of the world’s first grid-scale nuclear fusion power plant, able to harness this futuristic clean power and generate electricity from it by the early 2030s, according to an announcement by the startup Commonwealth Fusion Systems.
** A small town in North Carolina has filed a lawsuit against one of the country’s largest energy suppliers over climate change. According to the report from NPR, the town of Carrboro, North Carolina, has filed suit against Duke Energy. The town says Duke has known about climate change and the warming of the planet, and the fact that coal and gas were primary causes of it.
World
** Tesla’s sales in Europe have plunged by 40pc as the electric carmaker battles a backlash from buyers against Elon Musk’s support for Donald Trump. The company’s sales across the European Union tumbled to 18,786 in November, down from 31,810 a year earlier.
** India has emerged as the leading source of growth in global oil consumption in 2024 and 2025, overtaking China this year, according to the EIA’s December Short-Term Energy Outlook (STEO). China’s oil consumption grew by more than India’s in almost every year from 1998 through 2023, with China’s oil consumption regularly growing more than any other country during those years.
** A “floating megabomb” cargo ship with links to Russia unnecessarily dumped 300 tons of toxic fertiliser into the North Sea in an act of government-sanctioned “environmental terrorism”, an MP has claimed.
** Honda, Japan’s second-largest car company, and Nissan, its third-largest, are in talks to deepen ties, including the possibility of setting up a holding company, two people familiar with the matter said on Wednesday.
** Long stretches of Russia’s Black Sea coastline are covered in oil spilled by the wreck of two Russian tankers over the weekend, with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky warning of an “environmental disaster.”