** Blue states are preparing for a legal battle with the Trump administration over whether they will be allowed to continue to adopt California’s more stringent regulations on tailpipe emissions. (Stateline)
** U.S. Senate Democrats say Republicans are rushing to confirm former North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum as interior secretary without the necessary background checks and paperwork.
** The owner of a 1,000 MW Indiana coal plant is nearing a long-term deal to sell a majority of the plant’s output to a data center operator.
** Honda announces plans to mass produce two new electric vehicle models at an Ohio plant that underwent a $700 million expansion in 2022.
** Offering a unique approach to powering data centers through nuclear energy, Deep Fission and Endeavour Energy have announced a strategic partnership. Their agreement plans to bury small modular reactors (SMRs) a mile underground. Deep Fission, a nuclear energy company, is pioneering this new approach. They have designed small nuclear reactors that are lowered into 30-inch boreholes drilled a mile deep.
** The leader of a Japanese crime syndicate who was charged by U.S. authorities with trafficking nuclear materials from Myanmar pleaded guilty on Wednesday, the U.S. Justice Department said in a statement. Takeshi Ebisawa, 60, of Japan, pleaded guilty in Manhattan, New York, to conspiring with a network of associates to traffic nuclear materials, including uranium and weapons-grade plutonium, from Myanmar to other countries, the Justice Department said.
World
** A rally in liquefied natural gas has pushed Asian prices to a rare and substantial premium over oil, paving the way for major consumers to shift to cheaper but dirtier fuels. Japan-Korea marker prices for LNG, the Asian benchmark, were as much as 22% more expensive than Brent crude earlier this month on an energy-equivalent basis, according to Bloomberg calculations.
** Sales of electric and hybrid vehicles jumped more than 40 percent in China last year, as demand for new energy models continues to surge and the sector remains entrenched in a gruelling price war. The Chinese electric vehicle market has witnessed explosive growth in recent years, driven in part by generous subsidies from Beijing.
** More Chinese regions are cutting electricity prices to help out their embattled industries, which is likely to worsen the squeeze on profits at power suppliers. Bloomberg reports the richest coastal provinces have reduced their benchmark thermal power prices by about 10% from last year, according to a briefing by UBS Group AG this week. The bank expects power demand for coal, the country’s mainstay fuel, to fall by 4% in 2025.