Current conditions: A powerful storm system is bringing heavy rain and flash flooding from Texas to Missouri for the next few days • An Arctic chill is sweeping over Western Europe, bringing heavy snow to Denmark, southern Sweden, and northern Germany • A cold snap in East Asia has plunged Seoul and Beijing into freezing temperatures.
THE TOP FIVE
1. Trump takes aim at the Endangered Species Act
An endangered American condor.David McNew/Getty Images
The Trump administration on Wednesday proposed significant new limits on federal protection under the Endangered Species Act. A series of four tweaked rules would reset how the bedrock environmental law to prevent animal and plant extinctions could be used to block oil drilling, logging, and mining in habitats for endangered wildlife, The New York Times reported. Among the most contentious is a proposal to allow the government to consider economic factors before determining whether to list a species as endangered. Another change would raise the bar for enacting protections based on predicted future threats such as climate change. “This administration is restoring the Endangered Species Act to its original intent, protecting species through clear, consistent and lawful standards that also respect the livelihoods of Americans who depend on our land and resources,” Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum said in a statement.
In Congress, meanwhile, bipartisan reforms to make federal permitting easier are advancing. Representative Scott Peters, the Democrat in charge of the permitting negotiations, called the SPEED Act introduced by Representative Bruce Westerman, the Republican chairman of the Natural Resources Committee, a “huge step forward,” according to a post on X from Politico reporter Josh Siegel. But Peters hinted that getting the legislation to the finish line would require the executive branch to provide “permit certainty,” a thinly-veiled reference to Democrats’ demand that the Trump administration ease off its so-called “total war on wind” turbines.
2. Turkey beat Australia in the race to host the next UN climate summit
In World Cup soccer, Turkey hasn’t faced Australia in more than a decade. But the two countries went head to head in the competition to host next year’s United Nations climate summit, COP31. Turkey won, Bloomberg reported last night. Australia’s defeat is a blow not just to Canberra but to those who had hoped a summit Down Under would set the stage for an “island COP.” The pre-conference leaders’ gathering is set to take place on an as-yet-unnamed Pacific island, which had raised hopes that the next confab could put fresh emphasis on the concerns of low-lying nations facing sea-level rise.
3. Data center buildout risks winter outages
More than a dozen states where data centers are popping up could face electric power emergencies under extreme conditions this winter, a grid security watchdog warned this week, E&E News reported. The North American Electric Reliability Corporation listed New England, the Carolinas, most of Texas, and the Pacific Northwest among the most threatened regions. If those emergencies take place, the grid operators would need to import more electricity from other regions and seek voluntary power cutbacks from customers before resorting to rotating blackouts.
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4. Anti-nuclear groups sue to block restart of Palisades plant in Michigan
The United States is on the cusp of restarting a permanently shuttered atomic power plant for the first time. But anti-nuclear groups are making a last-ditch effort to block the revival. In a complaint filed Monday in the U.S. District court for the Western District of Michigan, a trio of activist organizations — Beyond Nuclear, Don’t Waste Michigan, and Michigan Safe Energy Future — argued that the plant should never have received regulatory approval for a restart. As I wrote in this newsletter at the time, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission granted plant owner Holtec International permission to go ahead with the restoration in July. Last month, the company — best known for manufacturing waste storage vessels and decommissioning defunct plants — received a shipment of fuel for the single-reactor station, as I reported here. While the opponents are asking the federal judge to intervene, state lawmakers in Michigan are considering new subsidies for nuclear power, Bridge Michigan reported.
Further north along Michigan’s western coastline, a coal-fired power plant set to close down in May got another extension from the Trump administration. In an order signed Tuesday, Secretary of Energy Chris Wright renewed his direction to utility Consumers Energy to hold off on shutting down the facility, which the administration deemed necessary to stave off blackouts. The latest order, Michigan Advance noted, extends until February 17, 2026. President Donald Trump’s efforts to prop up the coal industry haven’t gone so well elsewhere. As Heatmap’s Matthew Zeitlin reported last week, coal-fired stations keep breaking down, with equipment breaking at more than twice the rate of wind turbines.
5. Members of the nation’s largest grid fail to agree on plan for data centers
Matthew had another timely story out yesterday: Members of the PJM Interconnection’s voting base of advisers met Wednesday to consider a dozen different proposals for how to bring more data centers online put forward by data center companies, transmission developers, utilities, state lawmakers, advocates, PJM’s market monitor, and PJM itself. None passed. “There was no winner here,” PJM chief executive Manu Asthana told the meeting following the announcement of the vote tallies. There was, however, “a lot of information in these votes,” he added. “We’re going to study them closely.” The grid operator still aims to get something to federal regulators by the end of the year.
THE KICKER
Here’s a gruesome protocol that apparently exists when a toothed whale washes up. Federal officials arrived on Nantucket on Wednesday afternoon to remove a beached sperm whale’s jaw. Per the Nantucket Current: “This is being done to prevent any theft of its teeth, which are illegal to take and possess. The Environmental Police will take the jaw off-island.”
An endangered American condor.David McNew/Getty Images
