** FirstEnergy wants to add $108 million to the rates paid by customers of its Ohio utilities so the company can avoid taking a loss for a corporate accounting foul-up flagged repeatedly in audits by state and federal utility regulators. A 2022 audit by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission found that FirstEnergy’s subsidiaries may have mischarged customers for corporate overhead costs that the company’s utilities wrongly accounted for as capitalized construction-related expenses between 2015 and 2021.
** An analysis finds the Trump administration EPA has dramatically reduced the number of pollution enforcement cases it’s pursuing compared to previous administrations, and the government shutdown has slowed enforcement even further.
** The Solar Energy Industries Association finds Trump administration policies threaten more than 500 planned solar and storage projects totaling 116 GW of capacity.
** Bloom Energy, Caterpillar, and other makers of fuel cells, gas turbines, and other equipment see a windfall as tech companies rush to secure electricity for data centers.
** Grid operator PJM is getting close to completing a plan for managing data center connections that includes prioritizing projects that come with their own generation and plans for how the facilities would be treated in case of a rolling blackout.
** A Minnesota environmental group joins its fourth lawsuit seeking to block a data center in the state based on a lack of public transparency.
WORLD