23 February 2026

UTILITIES

• PacifiCorp agrees to pay $575 million to settle federal government lawsuits related to the utility’s alleged role in sparking six wildfires in Oregon and California in 2020. (OPB)
• New Mexico Attorney General Raúl Torrez says the state’s largest utility may have violated state law by selling $400 million worth of stock to a Blackstone affiliate without regulators’ approval. (Albuquerque Journal)
• Idaho Power sells its 20,000-customer Oregon service area to Oregon Trail Electric Cooperative for $154 million. (Idaho Business Review) 
• A Democratic California lawmaker introduces legislation that would create an expedited process for San Francisco and other cities to break away from Pacific Gas & Electric and form their own public utilities. (CBS News) 

EFFICIENCY

• Observers say Oregon’s “carrot-not-stick” policies encouraging and incentivizing victims of the 2020 Labor Day fires to rebuild energy-efficient and climate-resilient homes should serve as a model for other states grappling with natural disasters. (Canary Media)

CLEAN ENERGY

• Wyoming legislation that would have exempted plug-in solar panels from state-level regulation dies in committee after utilities pushed back on safety concerns. (WyoFile)
• Hecate Energy sells rights to its planned 2,000 MW Cereza solar-plus-storage project on the federal Hanford site in Washington state to Savion. (Olympian)

DATA CENTERS

• A Democratic California lawmaker calls on Imperial County supervisors to halt a contested data center project and release more information on the facility’s power and water use. (KPBS) 

COAL

• Environmental groups prepare to file a lawsuit seeking to block the Trump administration’s rollback of Biden-era mercury air toxics standards that could have forced the Colstrip coal plant in Montana to shut down. (Montana Free Press)
• Wyoming’s coal industry says the Trump administration revoking Biden-era mercury air toxics standards is unlikely to affect Powder River Basin mines, which mostly serve facilities that already comply with the rules. (WyoFile)

OIL & GAS

• Oregon lawmakers consider legislation that would require bulk oil and liquid fuel terminals to prove they can pay for disaster response, cleanup, and recovery. (Oregonian) 

• Republican U.S. House lawmakers launch an investigation into advocacy groups’ efforts to block the Willow oil and gas drilling project on Alaska’s North Slope, claiming they use “ethically dubious sue and settle tactics.” (E&E News, news release)

• The Trump administration opens 2.1 million acres of previously protected federal land in Alaska to new mining claims and oil and gas drilling, drawing advocates’ criticism. (news release)

• Seismologists find earthquake frequency in the Permian Basin has spiked by as much as 700% over the last decade, and attribute most of the increase to oil and gas drilling and wastewater reinjection. (News-Sun) 

• The federal Bureau of Land Management seeks public input on 32 proposed oil and gas leases covering 21,181 acres in southern and northern New Mexico. (news release)

GRID

• Las Vegas police investigate a man who rammed his car into an electrical substation in southern Nevada as a “terrorism-related event.” (Associated Press)
• A judge sentences a Washington state man to one and a half years in federal prison for sabotaging an electrical substation in Oregon. (Oregonian) 

NUCLEAR

• Energy Northwest brings its Columbia nuclear plant in Washington state back online after a six-day shutdown for unexpected repairs. (Seattle Times) 
• Oregon lawmakers consider legislation that would direct the state’s energy department to study the pros and cons of developing and deploying advanced nuclear reactors. (SightlineU308)

NEW FROM CANARY

• Can a big battery help Boston save billions on the power grid? Maybe. — Jeff St. John
• Where’s New York on climate goals? Falling behind. — Kathryn Krawczyk