• Solar accounted for most of the capacity the nation added to its electric grids last year. That feat marked the first time since World War II, when hydropower was booming, that a renewable power source comprised more than half of the nation’s energy additions.
• Many planned U.S. solar factories probably won’t be built, as cheap imports from Chinese companies push global cell and panel prices so low that even federal subsidies can’t sustain domestic plants, a report warns.
• American power consumption will rise to record highs in 2024 and 2025, the U.S. Energy Information Administration said in its Short Term Energy Outlook last week. The EIA projected that power demand will rise to 4,099 billion kilowatt-hours in 2024 and 4,128 billion kWh in 2025.
U.S. natural gas production will decline in 2024 while demand will rise to a record high, the EIA predicted.
Lower global oil production, higher gasoline costs, lower natural gas prices and increased solar power are what the EIA expects for the remainder of the year.
• Electric vehicle maker Rivian struggled with supply chain issues, sagging demand for EVs and pressure from investors before canceling plans to build a $5 billion factory in Georgia. However, Gov. Brian Kemp responded to Rivian’s announcement by saying that since Georgia put up $1.5 billion in incentives, the state will hold the company to its original plans.
• Research by What Car magazine showed EVs have up to a third less range than advertised. Across the dozen EVs that were tested, range was on average 29.9% less than the official Worldwide Harmonised Light Vehicle Test Procedure figure that carmakers are legally required to publish.
• The Biden administration unveiled a new plan last week to place charging infrastructure for EV freight trucks in high-traffic corridors, including Interstates 35, 40 and 44 in Oklahoma.
As laid out by the government, the plan would include all counties in Oklahoma where the three interstates are located. The interstates were listed as “Zero-Emission Freight Corridors.” The proposed plan also included proposed EV truck charging sites at various parking lots along the interstates.
The plan does not include any more federal funding, but rather is a strategy.
• The January closure of a southeast Missouri aluminum plant was blamed on cold weather issues, but now there is a report claiming the cause actually was the high cost of electricity needed to run the plant.
The Magnitude 7 Metals plant in Marston, Missouri, reportedly produced as much as 30% of the total supply of aluminum in the U.S. It was the third aluminum plant in the U.S. to close in less than two years, leaving four remaining.
Aluminum is a metal used in everything from airplanes and cars to solar panels and electric transmission lines.
E&E News reported that the high cost of electricity needed to make the aluminum was more of a consideration in the decision to close the plant than the publicly stated reason. At least 40% of the cost of aluminum is electricity because of the near-constant high electricity demand in the manufacturing process.
So much electricity was needed at the aluminum plant that Magnitude 7 Metals was the single largest consumer of energy in Missouri.
• New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham used her veto power to kill a bill that would have given a tax exemption to operators of small oil and gas wells in her state. The exemption for “stripper” wells was included in a catch-all tax package approved in February by the New Mexico Legislature.
But the governor used a line-item veto against the exemption – the only veto in the 149-page tax package, reported Source NM. The governor had been urged by a coalition of 29 environmental groups to veto the exemption, calling it an “unnecessary and unsound tax giveaway” to polluters.
• The head of the Electric Cooperatives in Arkansas suggests it might be time to reconsider the movement to shut down coal-fired electric generating power plants. Buddy Hasten, CEO of the cooperatives, said if the nation moves to renewable energy as quickly as the federal government wants, it might also result in more rolling blackouts such as those seen in recent years in Texas.
Hasten said 60,000 megawatts of coal-fire power generation are set to retire nationwide in the next four years.
• An analysis found that Texas has experienced 263 power outages since 2019, the most of any state in the nation, indicating its power grid is struggling under demand and extreme weather.
• The U.S. Supreme Court has been asked to settle a dispute that has stalled creation of an oil train carrying crude oil from Utah’s Uinta Basin through Colorado and eventually to the Cushing Hub in northern Oklahoma.
After the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit ruled in August against federal approval of the 88-mile railway, the Seven County Infrastructure Coalition that was formed by seven Utah counties to create the railway filed their appeal with the highest court in the land.
The railway project had approval from federal regulators, but opponents and the D.C. appellate court contended the regulatory agencies did not properly review the potential environmental impacts.
• Smart Sand Inc., a frac sand supply company with operations in El Reno as well as in Texas, Wisconsin, Illinois, Ohio and Pennsylvania, reported fourth quarter revenue of nearly $62 million and $296 million for the year.
“Smart Sand delivered strong operating and financial results for the full year 2023,” the company’s chief executive officer said.
In the fourth quarter the company had sales of 1,016,000 tons of sand for oil and gas drilling operations throughout the country. For the year Smart Sand sold and delivered 4,514,000 tons.
Total revenue and sand sales both increased by 16% year-over-year, as a result of increased sand sales volumes and higher prices primarily driven by increased market activity in the operating basins the company serves.
• New York’s assembly advanced a bill to forbid drilling and fracking for natural gas and oil by using carbon dioxide, a process some fracking firms had considered in the state.
• Saudi Aramco is in talks with companies for liquefied natural gas projects in the U.S. as it looks to the fuel for global growth at a time when rivals in the region are also expanding in the sector.
• The Philippines is counting on the U.S. and its allies to play a crucial role in its plans to explore energy resources in the disputed South China Sea, according to Manila’s envoy to Washington.
• Resource-scarce Japan is shoring up long-term supplies of liquefied natural gas from close allies Australia and the U.S. as key contracts from providers, including Russia, are set to expire by the early 2030s.