EPA To Separate, Delay, Broaden Power Plant Rules: The EPA will delay issuing new, wider-reaching standards for existing methane gas-fired power plants until after the 2024 election but will move ahead with greenhouse gas limits for existing coal and new gas plants this spring, the agency said Thursday. Many environmental justice groups praised the decision to revise the standards for existing gas plants to include limits on more pollutants. Some environmental groups criticized the delays, arguing it threatens urgently-needed greenhouse gas emissions reductions and opens the possibility of such a rule never being implemented at all if President Biden is not reelected. “We understand the urgency of this climate crisis, but we also understand the urgency of front line communities and the disproportionate impact of many pollutants that our communities are seeing,” Regan told Bloomberg. “There’s a lot of pressure here to move as quickly and as strategically as possible.” (Bloomberg $, Politico/E&E News, AP, Washington Post $, New York Times $; Sen. Whitehouse criticism: E&E $)

AI Power Demand Threatens Grid: Increased electricity demand driven by the growth of artificial intelligence threatens to overwhelm supply, renewable or otherwise, the New York Times reports. The proliferation of electricity-hungry cloud computing data centers across the country — typically in regions where such services are especially in demand, like Dallas, Silicon Valley, and "Data Center Alley" in Northern Virginia — has led to significant investment in renewable energy. Access to that electricity, however, has become at least as important as proximity to customers. “Anybody who has any significant source of power has now become a new data center market,” data center industry consultant Jim Kerrigan told the Times. AI's share of the global data center power demand is predicted to quintuple in the next year, and threatens to push demand beyond what the grid can handle. “They have been building [data centers] at a breakneck pace with so many other kinds of drivers for [electricity] demand,” said Andy Lawrence, head of research at the Uptime Institute. “AI’s kind of the froth on top.” (New York Times $)

Most Infrastructure Law Funds Going To Cars: The vast majority of funding disbursed under the 2021 infrastructure law has gone to car-dominant transportation at the expense of other less-dangerous, climate-friendly forms of transportation, a new analysis finds. “We’re seeing investments that are not too conscious of the climate across the board from states,” Corrigan Salerno, a policy associate at Transportation for America, which released the report, told The Guardian. More than half of funds disbursed to states have gone to highway expansion and resurfacing (about $70 billion) with just one-fifth of the funds ($25.6 billion) going to public transit. The expansion of highways — often sited intentionally to harm Black and Brown communities — has been shown to only increase congestion. “This much money going into highway expansion is, for one, a liability into the future, and two, it just doesn’t work," Salerno added. "We’ve been expanding highways for decades on decades, and everyone consistently finds themselves stuck in traffic.” The Department of Transportation on Wednesday, the same day the Transportation for American analysis was released, announced $9.9 billion in new funding for state and local transit programs. (TFA Analysis: The Guardian; New DOT funds: E&E $)

COSTS: The human cost of climate-related disasters is acutely undercounted, new study says (NPR)

ORPHANED WELLS: “Nobody really knows what you’re supposed to do”: Leaking, exploding abandoned wells wreak havoc in West Texas (Texas Tribune and Inside Climate News), Colorado landowners sue oil company over clean-up of ‘orphaned’ well (The Guardian)

DENIAL & GREENWASHING: ‘A Trojan horse of legitimacy’: Shell launches a ‘climate tech’ startup advertising jobs in oil and gas (The Guardian)

CRYPTO: Greens press court to allow EIA crypto energy use survey (E&E $), Bitcoin miners win legal battle to keep mum about energy use (The Verge, Houston Chronicle), Crypto miners, Biden administration appear to reach agreement over energy data collection (Utility Dive)

INFLATION REDUCTION ACT: How the IRA helps hospitals go green (E&E $), Low-income communities will soon get $7 billion for local solar (Canary Media), Slowing wind installations threaten emissions progress under the IRA: report (Utility Dive)

SCOTUS: Ex-Interior secretary takes on abortion pills, agency power at Supreme Court (E&E $, E&E $), Oil companies launch next Supreme Court climate fight (E&E $)

AGENCIES: Interior, EPA cuts set as lawmakers finish 6 spending bills (E&E $)

DOE: Local, tribal clean energy projects can tap into $18M from DOE (Utility Dive)

SEC: SEC sets vote on landmark climate rule (E&E News, Reuters), What is in the US SEC's proposed rule on climate reporting? (Reuters)

WHITE HOUSE: How one methane scientist influenced Biden’s pause on LNG approvals (Bloomberg $), Why it’s really, really important for Biden to finalize his emissions standards (Heatmap $)

THE HILL: Republicans step up attacks on Clean Air Act, soot rule (E&E $), House passes nuclear bill with broad bipartisan support (E&E $), Brown, Merkley introduce bill to ban LNG exports to China (E&E News), Senate fails to override veto of anti-EV rule resolution (E&E $), What McConnell’s departure means for GOP energy leadership (E&E News)

CITIES AND STATES: Lawmakers across the US seek to curb utility spending on politics, ads and more extras (Missouri Independent), Montana regulators urged to weigh climate change in energy rules (E&E $)

FERC: Biden nominates 3 FERC commissioners (Utility Dive, The Hill), What to know about the 3 FERC nominees (E&E News)

IMPACTS: Fresh from a deadly cholera outbreak, Zambia declares drought a national emergency (AP), California rains resurrect a long-dead lake in dry Death Valley (Washington Post $), Climate change brings a river’s wrath down on western Uganda (Mongabay), California's coveted coastal cliffs eroding in atmospheric rivers (Reuters), Climate change cost US ski industry billions, study says, and future depends on emissions (AP), Climate change could shorten the life span of US bridges (Yale Climate Connections), Risotto crisis: the fight to save Italy’s beloved dish from extinction (The Guardian), Six different countries facing same climate risks (Axios), VA medical centers vulnerable to extreme weather as climate warms (Inside Climate News)

HEAT: El Niño expected to smash heat records in 2024 (The Verge, The Guardian)

WILDFIRES: Maui County officials select final disposal site for debris from Lahaina wildfire (AP)

SMOKEHOUSE CREEK FIRE: Charred homes, blackened earth after Texas town revisited by destructive wildfire 10 years later (AP), “We’ve lost everything”: Texas wildfire grows to 900,000 acres, razing entire neighborhoods (Democracy Now, Washington Post $, AP, CBS), Climate change is raising Texas’ already high wildfire risks (New York Times $), Maps of the Smokehouse Creek Fire in the Texas panhandle (Washington Post $), Some left helpless to watch as largest wildfire in Texas history devastates their town (AP)

SIERRA SNOW: ‘Life-threatening’ blizzard bears down on sierras; 12 feet of snow possible (Washington Post $, AP, The Hill)

DROUGHT: In drought-hit Sicily, 'water is gold' (Reuters)

WATER: Texas has the most urban runoff of any state. Could that solve looming water woes? (Houston Chronicle), California’s urban runoff flows down the drain. Can the drought-plagued state capture more of it? (CAL Matters), Climate change, cost and competition for water drive settlement over tribal rights to Colorado River (AP), A River at Risk (VOA podcast)

RENEWABLES: Shell's US solar unit launches asset sale, sources say (Reuters), Understanding the weather behind a down year for wind energy (Inside Climate News)

GEOTHERMAL: Frackers are now drilling for clean power (Wall Street Journal $)

BATTERIES: In rush for lithium, miners turn to the oil fields of Arkansas (Yale Environment 360)

OIL & GAS: As Congo seeks to expand drilling, some communities worry pollution will worsen (AP), Exxon draws K Street allies in key shareholder case (Axios)

PIPELINES: Tribes seek Biden backing for Line 5 pipeline opposition (E&E $)

HYDROGEN: DOE sides with industry on hydrogen tax rules (E&E $), Criticism of clean hydrogen tax credit builds (Houston Chronicle)

UTILITIES: Florida Public Counsel raises initial objection to Duke's $818M rate hike request (E&E $)

GRID: Electricity demand is surging for the first time since the 1990s (Heatmap $), Minnesota coalition seeks to remove barriers to building power lines along highways (Energy News Network)

CARBON REMOVAL: Singapore to build world’s largest facility to boost carbon-removal power of the ocean (TIME)

GEOENGINEERING: Nations fail to agree ban or research on solar geoengineering (Climate Home), Safety fears stall UN bid to examine sun-blocking climate change tech (Reuters)

HOUSING: The American southwest is finally starting to embrace vertical living (Wall Street Journal $)

AGRICULTURE: The farming conundrum (New York Times $)

THE KIDS THESE DAYS: Two young climate scientists. Two visions of the solution. (New York Times $)

INTERNATIONAL: People displaced by climate crisis to testify in first-of-its-kind hearing in US (The Guardian), UK accused of ‘moving goalposts’ on climate finance commitments (The Guardian, Climate Home), Algeria is in the spotlight as leaders of gas producing countries convene for summit (AP), EU may exempt islands from proposed jet fuel tax until 2032 (Reuters)

• Brazil holds the key to Latin America's solar potential (Reuters, Gavin Maguire column)
• Should America be a colorblind society? debate made me think more deeply about racism. (USA Today, John Wood Jr. op-ed)
• How utilities can unleash the power of orchestration through virtual power plants (Utility Dive, Patty Cook and Steve Fine op-ed)
• We must start preparing the US workforce for the effects of AI – now (The Guardian, Steven Greenhouse op-ed)

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