COAL: An Alaska utility scraps plans to shutter a troubled coal plant, saying it needs the facility’s generation to offset a looming natural gas shortage in the Cook Inlet. (Alaska Beacon)

SOLAR: 

WIND: 

CLEAN ENERGY: 

HYDROPOWER: The U.S. Energy Department awards Pacific Gas & Electric $34.5 million to fund 19 hydropower projects in northern California. (Power) 

GRID: California’s grid operator says new data center interconnections have led them to increase demand forecasts for the San Jose area by 60%. (RTO Insider, subscription)

MINING: 

ELECTRIFICATION: Washington state’s building industry and conservative advocates push a ballot measure that would prohibit local and state governments from banning natural gas hookups. (Crosscut)

EMISSIONS: Colorado advocates say a newly launched state initiative using cutting-edge technologies to monitor landfill methane pollution could be a model for slashing emissions of the potent greenhouse gas. (Canary Media)

PUBLIC LANDS: A federal court begins hearing a Utah lawsuit seeking to revoke presidents’ authority to establish landscape-scale national monuments that block mining and oil and gas drilling on hundreds of thousands of acres of public land. (Bloomberg Law)

BIOFUELS: A company looks to produce biofuels by injecting molasses into coal seams in Wyoming, extracting the methane and leaving the carbon dioxide underground. (Buffalo Bulletin)

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Jonathan hails from southwestern Colorado and has been writing about the land, cultures, and communities of the Western United States for more than two decades. He compiles the Western Energy News digest. He is the author of three books, a contributing editor at High Country News, and the editor of the Land Desk, an e-newsletter that provides coverage and context on issues critical to the West.