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Pallone’s shift comes in response to the Ratepayer Protection Act, which would enshrine into law the voluntary pledge tech companies signed with the White House to pay for grid costs from their server farms. Heatmap’s Matthew Zeitlin wrote earlier this week that the bill was “not so much an anti-artificial intelligence or anti-data center bill, but rather a move to insulate further data center development from political pressure stemming from rising electricity costs.” When Pallone made his statement a day later, Matthew wrote: “Well, at least one influential lawmaker seems to agree with me.”
The Iran War has cost the average American car owner an extra $156 and the average SUV driver another $232 in gasoline costs, according to new data from the policy shop Third Way. But the newly mapped analysis, shared exclusively with me, shows that Republican-leaning states in the Mountain West and beyond paid some of the highest prices for a conflict. Alaska saw one of the biggest spikes, with gas prices rising by $1.40 per gallon, a 39% increase. Wyoming followed close behind, with prices soaring by $1.37 per gallon, a 50% surge. Prices in Utah, meanwhile, climbed by $1.30, or 47%. That stands in contrast to many big Democratic-leaning states. New York’s gas prices rose by $1.23, or 41%, while California’s prices went up $0.94, or 20%. That, of course, doesn’t reflect where the prices were already high. I just returned this week from a trip to Los Angeles, where gas was nearly twice as expensive as in New York City.
Century Aluminum, America’s largest primary aluminum producer and the developer behind the first new U.S. smelter in 50 years, has inked a deal with a green cement startup to supply a key raw material. Brimstone, known as a major player in the race to commercialize green cement, also generates alumina. On Wednesday, the startup unveiled a memorandum of understanding with Century Aluminum to establish a domestic “mine to metal supply chain” for aluminum made from scratch rather than scrap. “Foreign sources, including China, currently dominate global alumina production. Brimstone is bringing alumina production home and doing it at a globally competitive price,” Brimstone CEO Cody Finke said in a press release. “Brimstone is upending the massive global imbalance by producing alumina from rock quarried here in the United States.”
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Until the nation’s flagship reactor project came online and transformed Southern Company’s Alvin W. Vogtle Generating Station in eastern Georgia into America’s most powerful atomic electrical plant, Arizona’s Palo Verde Generating Station was the No.1 nuclear facility by size in the country. The desert state is now looking to reclaim its mantle. The trio of utilities Arizona Public Service, Salt River Project, and Tucson Electric Power said Wednesday they are continuing “to work together to explore adding nuclear generation in Arizona.” The next step, the companies said, is a siting study that’s expected to be completed within the next six months. The Arizona Corporation Commission, the regulator in charge of utilities in the state, is holding an informational workshop today.
Meanwhile, the developer behind Canada’s flagship reactor design — which, because it’s cooled with pressurized heavy water, can run on raw uranium — just submitted initial paperwork to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to start the licensing process to approve what’s known as the CANDU. Pronounced CAN-do and produced by manufacturer AtkinsRéalis, the reactor is the workhorse of the Canadian and Indian fleets and can be built reliably, but requires more maintenance than the light water reactors that run on enriched uranium and make up the entire U.S. fleet. “As the United States enters a new chapter in its civilian nuclear program, AtkinsRéalis is uniquely positioned, as the steward of CANDU technology, to help advance the country’s ambitious energy policy through proven, low-cost reactor technology with a world-class reputation,” Ian L. Edwards, the company’s president and chief executive, said in a statement. As I told you last month, the CANDU is at the heart of Canada’s new nuclear strategy.
Los Bronces mine in Chile. ARIEL MARINKOVIC/AFP via Getty Images
The world needs a lot more copper. And while siting and building new mines takes time, two of the planet’s biggest producers are preparing to increase production at existing mines. On Wednesday, London-based Anglo American and the Chilean state-owned Codelco inked a deal to increase production through a joint venture at Los Bronces and Andina copper mines in the South American nation. The joint mining plan is expected to unlock 2.7 million metric tons of additional copper over a 21-year period, delivering an average of 12,000 tons per year. The increase comes with “minimal capital investment” and should bring the new supply online by 2030. “This agreement represents a more efficient and responsible way to develop one of the world’s leading copper districts,” Bernardo Fontaine, Codelco’s chairman, said in a statement. “It allows us to make better use of existing infrastructure, capture greater benefits for Chile, and move forward with a long-term vision based on operational excellence, sustainability, and the responsible use of resources.”
If green hydrogen is the stuff made with clean electricity and water and blue hydrogen is made with natural gas equipped with carbon capture, then the orange stuff is found in underground rock formations where naturally occurring gas forms and then is encouraged to continue forming through artificial means. Heatmap’s Katie Brigham did a good job of explaining the concept here. Well, now a French renewables developer FDE is promising to start producing orange hydrogen “by late 2028 or early 2029” after finding a naturally-occurring underground reservoir in northern France that can be tapped and stimulated to produce additional fuel, Hydrogen Insight reported.
The Trump administration just unveiled one of its biggest bets on nuclear power yet. The Department of Energy announced $17.5 billion in low-interest loans for utilities to pay for the equipment needed to order new Westinghouse AP1000 reactors. The program marks arguably the most significant effort yet to reclaim U.S. control over its flagship reactor design. While the two 1,100-megawatt units completed at Southern Company’s Alvin W. Vogtle Generating Station in 2023 and 2024 were the first installed in the U.S., China has been building its own version of the reactors at an industrial scale for years. The program will support up to 10 reactors, including two per venture with as many as five utilities. The power companies, currently in talks with the administration, have not yet been named. But Dan Sumner, the chief executive of Westinghouse Electric, told The Wall Street Journal the deal “really kick-starts fleet-scale nuclear development in the United States.” As my colleague Robinson Meyer wrote last night: “I hesitate to praise the project's climate bonafides at the risk of discouraging the Trump administration, but it is worth noting that if this project were to succeed, it would be one of the largest state-assisted build-outs of zero-carbon electricity in recent American history. But it would still take some time to arrive: These reactors aren’t forecast to come online til 2035.”
Yet another behemoth solar farm has come online. On Tuesday, the developer rPlus Energies said its Green River Energy Center had started operations. The facility in central Utah with 400-megawatts of solar panels and 1,600 megawatt-hours of batteries is now the largest solar-and-storage plant within PacifiCorp’s six-state territory out west, including Oregon, Washington, California, Utah, Wyoming, and Idaho. “Operation Gigawatt is about ensuring Utah has the reliable, homegrown energy needed to power opportunity for generations,” Utah Governor Spencer Cox, a Republican, said in a statement. “Green River Energy Center represents the kind of large-scale energy investment we need to deliver reliable energy, support rural Utah, and help power the next generation of prosperity across our state.”
The opening comes as solar is now generating more U.S. power than coal, as I told you recently.
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Lights out in Cuba. Magdalena Chodownik/Anadolu via Getty Images
The Supreme Court ruled Tuesday that Exxon Mobil has the right to sue a Cuban-owned company to recoup more than $70 million in 1960 dollars from an oil complex seized by the Cuban government after Fidel Castro’s revolution. Havana later transferred the ownership of the refinery, terminals, plants, and service stations to Corporación Cimex, the state-owned conglomerate. The lawsuit could now see the oil major try to recover more than $1 billion in losses. “Today’s decision is a critical moment in a 60 year effort to be compensated for what the Cuban government illegally seized,” Exxon spokesperson Todd Spitler told E&E News in an emailed statement. “It reflects two things: the merits of our argument and the fact that our company will fight a good fight for as long as it takes.”
The Trump administration understands the importance of refining cobalt — that’s why, as I reported last year, the Pentagon’s Defense Logistics Agency is pumping money into a startup that promises a new and cheap way to process the mineral. Canada’s Sherritt International started shutting down its Fort Saskatchewan refinery after the U.S. expanded sanctions on Cuba, halting exports of a feedstock supply needed for the plant in Alberta, Canada. The move, in addition to the Supreme Court ruling, come amid intensifying pressure by Washington on the Cuban regime.
California is once again following a New York trend. Just weeks after Albany sued to stop the Trump administration’s bid to pay TotalEnergies to give up its offshore wind projects, Sacramento is joining the litigation. “At a time when the country needs more reliable and sustainable power supply, the Trump Administration is busy using taxpayer money to strike backroom buyouts that make clean-energy projects disappear,” California Attorney General Rob Bonta said in a statement. “California won’t stand idly by as the Trump Administration illegally strikes deals to kill offshore wind projects and replace them with more windfalls for his fossil fuel friends; we’re putting the Administration on notice that we intend to sue.”
