** ENGIE North America announces a deal with an investment management company to build 31 battery energy storage facilities to strengthen grids in Texas and California.
** The White House proposes cutting the Low-Income Home Energy Assistance Program, which provided utility assistance to nearly 60,000 families in West Virginia in 2022.
** New Orleans-area officials vow to investigate more than 100,000 outages among Entergy and Cleco customers over the weekend that appear to have resulted from high power demand and low supply as numerous power plants went offline.
** Texas officials report a surge in theft from oil and gas facilities in the Permian Basin.
** The Trump administration has followed through on a threat to use emergency wartime powers to force expensive and polluting coal-fired power plants to stay open. On Friday, the U.S. Department of Energy issued an order demanding that the J.H. Campbell plant, a 1,560-megawatt coal-burning power plant owned by Michigan utility Consumers Energy, must abandon its plans to shut down on May 31 and instead continue operating through at least late August.
** The U.S. EPA has reportedly drafted a plan to eliminate all greenhouse gas emission limits on coal and gas power plants, stating in its proposed rule that the facilities “do not contribute significantly to dangerous pollution” or climate change.
World
** A high-stakes corporate clash is unfolding between Chevron CVX and ExxonMobil XOM — two of the world’s largest oil companies. At the heart of the dispute is Guyana’s offshore Stabroek Block, a massive oil field with over 11 billion barrels of recoverable reserves.
** India is addressing its rapidly growing electricity demand using affordable, clean, and efficient renewable energy sources, according to a new report from Rocky Mountain Institute (RMI), an independent, non-profit organisation based in the US.
