Infrastructure

"The culprit depends on where you live — but it’s probably not data centers (yet)."

"Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence company is continuing to fuel its data centers with unpermitted gas turbines, according to a Floodlight visual investigation. Thermal drone footage shows xAI is still burning gas at a facility in Southaven, Miss., despite a recent Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) ruling reiterating that doing so requires a state permit in advance."

"Across the calm waters behind a pumping station near Lake Borgne, hundreds of saplings stand out in the mist, wrapped in white plastic cylinders. To get there and to other sites like it, organizers have ferried dozens of volunteers week after week in airboats. They have a trailer equipped with supplies. Rubber boots in all different sizes. Bins full of snacks for the end of a hard day’s work."

"California Gov. Gavin Newsom announced this week that state oil and gas regulators have permanently closed one of the most infamous drill sites in Los Angeles, bringing an end to a decades-long community campaign to prevent dangerous gas leaks and spills from rundown extraction equipment."

"Russia continues to bomb Ukraine’s fossil-fueled power plants, leaving much of the nation shivering during a brutal winter. But Ukraine’s new emphasis on developing decentralized power — from solar panels to wind turbines — is advancing an unexpected green energy transition."

"A wastewater spill into the Potomac River that began last month now appears to be one of the largest in American history."

"The requirement would be next to impossible for federally funded charging stations to meet, industry advocates say."

"The Trump administration is proposing to require that federally funded electric vehicle chargers be fully U.S. made — an all-but-impossible target that could kill a multibillion-dollar effort to build a nationwide charging network.

Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said Tuesday that raising the threshold to 100 percent domestic manufacturing — up from 55 percent — would advance U.S. manufacturing and improve national security.

"The nation’s largest public utility says it now would prefer to keep operating two coal-fired power plants it had planned to shutter, changing course before a meeting of its board, which has a majority of members picked by the coal-friendly Trump administration."

"President Donald Trump plans to announce an executive order on Wednesday directing the U.S. Department of Defense to buy electricity from coal-fired power plants." "Climate and security experts say the plan is outdated and could place the U.S. at a competitive disadvantage."

"More than 500 enormous oil tanks dot the floodplains of the Guadalupe River and its tributaries where they cross one of Texas’ leading oilfields, an Inside Climate News investigation has found, posing risk of an environmental disaster." "Lack of a state floodplain policy in Texas enabled oil companies to build in areas hit by an epic inundation less than 30 years ago."