Governors' Wind Energy Coalition

The Diablo Canyon Power Plant, which sits on a cliff on California’s Central Coast, has been the subject of ceaseless protests and political battles since it was proposed in 1963.

Now, the plant is at the center of yet another major debate. After shuttering all the state’s other nuclear power plants in recent decades, California is considering extending Diablo’s life and lifting a moratorium on new reactors.

That these decisions are even on the table in California is a testament to the substantial change in public views of nuclear energy, which for decades has been reviled by the liberal lawmakers and environmental groups that wield tremendous power and influence in the state.

The Energy Department said on Tuesday that it would lend up to $1.9 billion to help restart a shuttered nuclear power plant in Iowa, in the Trump administration’s latest move aimed at reviving nuclear energy in the United States.

The loan would help NextEra Energy reopen the Duane Arnold nuclear power plant in Linn County, Iowa, which had ceased operating in 2020. NextEra, one of the nation’s largest power companies, announced last year that it planned to refurbish the plant’s reactor and seek regulatory approval to restart operations by the spring of 2029. Google has agreed to buy a portion of the plant’s electricity to help power data centers for artificial intelligence.

California utility PG&E (PCG.N) said on Wednesday it will defer about $2 billion in spending for next year and launched a strategic review, after an amended ‌state Senate bill raised concerns around wildfire liability costs.
The company faces renewed uncertainty over liability costs after a California Senate bill amendment did little to reduce utilities’ exposure to expenses related to the fires or address the long-term solvency of the state’s fund for it.

New Canadian tariffs targeting roughly $20 billion in U.S. imports officially snapped into place on Tuesday, the latest escalation in an increasingly costly trade war that has ensnarled two longtime allies.

The duties apply to a variety of U.S. goods, including clothing, cheese, metal parts and wood products. The approach is meant to mimic the taxes that President Trump imposed on Canada after trade talks between the two neighbors collapsed in acrimony last month.

For now, the economic effects of the tit-for-tat may be limited because the tariffs encompass only a small portion of the annual trade between the United States and Canada. The more pressing concern is a potential cycle of retaliation, one that results in even higher and more exhaustive duties that harm families and businesses on both sides of the border.

As China learns to live on less fuel since the Iran war, its carbon emissions are falling, a new analysis ‌showed on Thursday, with researchers saying a structural shift towards electrification and cleaner transport was creating the conditions for emissions’ sustained decline.
China’s carbon dioxide emissions shrank by 1% year-on-year in the second quarter of 2026, driven by a 9% decrease in oil consumption as consumers chose cleaner and cheaper ways to get around, according to a Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air (CREA) analysis for Carbon Brief.

As House Republicans fight behind closed doors about how to respond to the backlash against data centers, one committee is pushing forward on the issue publicly.

The House Energy and Commerce Committee has found itself at the forefront of the Capitol Hill data center debate, clearing the Ratepayer Protection Act — which sets frameworks to compel data centers to cover increased energy costs — in a unanimous vote this summer. And as data center discord swirled among House Republicans this week, the committee held another hearing on a bill to have data centers pay for their water use and system upgrades.

U.S. diesel fuel prices hit a record high Thursday afternoon, according to a fuel price monitoring service, surpassing the previous peak set in 2022 as surging crude oil and refining bottlenecks sent the cost of the fuel that underpins a wide swathe of the U.S. economy soaring.

Diesel prices have risen nearly 60 percent in the past 12 months as the U.S. war against Iran has scrambled oil shipments from the Middle East and Russia’s output of the fuel has dwindled because of its war against Ukraine. The new record is likely to spread through the economy and feed inflation that could damage Republican prospects of keeping control of Congress in November’s midterm elections.

Texas has earned a reputation for grid reliability issues over the years, but renewable energy and storage have flipped the script. Although US President Donald Trump has put a crimp in the wind industry, the killer combo of solar-plus-storage is dominating new capacity additions in the US generally, and in Texas particularly. Utility watchers in the state are crediting the trend with enabling grid operators to keep the kilowatts flowing without relying on conservation warnings to avoid outages.

That’s something of a disconnect with Texas’s deep red political profile, but then again, who ever said grid reliability has to be a political football? Oh, wait…

Clean energy jobs have propelled growth on the Eastern Plains with high-paying work in some of the state’s smallest counties, according to a new report by the Colorado solar industry that claims a $6.3 billion economic statewide impact by renewables. 

The growth will continue as solar and wind farms on the plains continue to push out dirtier fossil fuel generation, the report says, with clean energy predicted to add 3,594 jobs statewide in the next 10 years and 961 of those in Eastern Plains counties. That would boost economic impact by another $1.7 billion, the industry report says. 

Eastern Plains clean energy jobs grew from 4,316 in 2010 to 6,715 in 2024. Those utility jobs are the second-highest-paying job category in the eastern counties. 

A person familiar with the Trump administration’s discussions about Venezuela said that administration officials believe the oil deal has “at best” a “neutral impact” on the election process. The key question is whether the Trump team has decided that Rodríguez should serve out Maduro’s unfairly obtained term.

If Venezuela wants to have an election next year, preparation needs to start happening now, the person said. But Trump administration officials, for the most part, are indicating “there’s no rush.”

The Venezuelan political operative, who has connections to the Trump team, said they have heard people close to the administration talk about an election time frame that ranges from 2028 to 2030. Had Venezuela’s 2024 election gone smoothly, the country would have held its next presidential election in 2030 anyway. And simply holding a vote is not enough, stressed opposition leaders. It has to be free and fair, unlike the 2024 race alleged to have been rigged in favor of Maduro.