Current conditions: A cluster of storms from Sri Lanka to Southeast Asia triggered floods that have killed more than 900 so far • A snowstorm stretching 1,200 miles across the northern United States blanketed parts of Iowa, Illinois, and South Dakota with the white stuff • In China, 31 weather stations broke records for heat on Sunday.
THE TOP FIVE
1. Watchdog warns against new data centers in the nation’s largest grid system
The in-house market monitor at the PJM Interconnection filed a complaint last week to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission urging the agency to ban the nation’s largest grid operator from connecting any new data centers that the system can’t reliably serve. The warning from the PJM ombudsman comes as the grid operator is considering proposals to require blackouts during periods when there’s not enough electricity to meet data centers’ needs. The grid operator’s membership voted last month on a way forward, but no potential solution garnered enough votes to succeed, Heatmap’s Matthew Zeitlin wrote. “That result is not consistent with the basic responsibility of PJM to maintain a reliable grid and is therefore not just and reasonable,” Monitoring Analytics said, according to Utility Dive.
The push comes as residential electricity prices continue climbing. Rates for American households spiked by an average of 7.4% in September compared to the same month in 2024, according to new data from the Energy Information Administration.
2. EPA delays methane rule
The Environmental Protection Agency made some big news on Wednesday, just before much of the U.S. took off for Thanksgiving: It’s delaying a rule that would have required oil and gas companies to start reducing how much methane, a potent greenhouse gas, is released from their operations into the atmosphere. The regulation would have required oil and gas companies to start reducing how much methane, a potent greenhouse gas, is released from their operations into the atmosphere. Drillers were supposed to start tracking emissions this year. But the Trump administration is instead giving companies until January 2027 as it considers repealing the measure altogether.
3. New York’s state utility staffs up for a nuclear push amid blackout risks
The New York Power Authority, the nation’s second largest government-owned utility after the federal Tennessee Valley Authority, is staffing up in preparation for its push to build at least a gigawatt of new nuclear power generation. On Monday morning, NYPA named Todd Josifovski as its new senior vice president of nuclear energy development, tasking the veteran atomic power executive with charting the strategic direction and development of new reactor projects. Josifovski previously hailed from Ontario Power Generation, the state-owned utility in the eponymous Canadian province, which is building what is likely to be North America’s first small modular reactor project. (As Matthew wrote when NYPA first announced its plans for a new nuclear plant, the approach mirrors Ontario’s there.) NYPA is also adding Christopher Hanson, a former member of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission whom President Donald Trump abruptly fired from the federal agency this summer, as a senior consultant in charge of guiding federal financing and permitting.
The push comes as New York’s statewide grid reaches “an inflection point” as surging demand, an aging fleet, and a lack of dispatchable power puts the system at risk, according to the latest reliability report. “The margin for error is extremely narrow, and most plausible futures point to significant reliability shortfalls within the next ten years,” the report concluded. “Depending on demand growth and retirement patterns, the system may need several thousand megawatts of new dispatchable generation over that timeframe.”
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4. Zillow nixes climate risk data on house listings
Zillow, the country’s largest real estate site, removed a feature from more than a million listings that showed the risks from extreme weather, The New York Times reported. The website had started including climate risk scores last year, using data from the risk-modeling company First Street. But real estate agents complained that the ratings hurt sales, and homeowners protested that there was no way to challenge the scores. Following a complaint from the California Regional Multiple Listing Service, which operates a private database of brokers and agents, Zillow stopped displaying the scores.
5. Europe looks to replace fossil fuels with wood
The European Commission unveiled a new plan to replace fossil fuels in Europe’s economy with trees. By adopting the so-called Bioeconomy Strategy, released Thursday, the continent aims to remove fossil fuels in products Politico listed as “plastics, building materials, chemicals, and fibers” with organic materials that regrow, such as trees and crops. Doing so, the bloc argued, will help to preserve Europe’s “strategic autonomy” by making the continent less dependent on imported fuels.
Canada, meanwhile, is plowing ahead with its plans to strengthen itself against the U.S. by turning into an energy superpower. Already, the Trans Mountain pipeline is earning the federal coffers nearly $1.3 billion, based on my back-of-the-napkin conversion of the Canadian loonies cited in this Globe and Mail story to U.S. dollars. Now Prime Minister Mark Carney’s government is pitching a new pipeline from Alberta to the West Coast for export to Asia, as the Financial Times reported.
THE KICKER
Swapping bunker fuel-burning engines for nuclear propulsion units in container ships could shave up to $68 million off annual shipping expenses, a new report found. If small modular reactors designed to power a cargo vessel are commercialized within four years as expected, the shipping companies could eliminate $50 million in fuel costs each year and about $18 million in carbon penalties. That’s according to data from Lloyd’s Register and LucidCatalyst report for the Singaporean maritime services company Seaspan Corporation.
