Friday, May 22, 2026

[decomm_wkg] Supreme Court declines to hear case involving St. Louis contamination. "The companies had asked the Supreme Court to review whether federal nuclear safety regulations preempt state tort standards of care in public liability actions."

Supreme Court declines to hear case involving St. Louis contamination

The Supreme Court of the United States on Monday declined to hear an appeal from General Atomics subsidiary Cotter Corporation and Commonwealth Edison, an Exelon company, in a case over alleged radioactive contamination in the St. Louis, Mo., area, leaving in place an 8th Circuit Court ruling that allows the plaintiffs’ state-law tort claims to proceed under the federal Price-Anderson Act.

The denial came in Cotter Corporation, et al. v. Nikki Steiner Mazzocchio, et al., docket no. 24-1001, according to the court’s May 18 orders list and docket. The justices did not explain their decision, as is typical in certiorari denials.

The case: The dispute stems from claims by Nikki Steiner Mazzocchio and Angela Steiner Kraus, who allege that exposure to radioactive waste tied to sites near Coldwater Creek caused them to develop cancer. In an October 2024 decision, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 8th Circuit affirmed a lower court order declining to dismiss their claims against entities that allegedly handled the waste over the years, including Cotter Corp. and Commonwealth Edison, along with DJR Holdings and the St. Louis Airport Authority.

The companies had asked the Supreme Court to review whether federal nuclear safety regulations preempt state tort standards of care in public liability actions. The 8th Circuit said they do not, concluding that state tort law can still supply the applicable standard in this context. By denying review, the Supreme Court left that ruling intact, allowing the litigation to continue in the lower courts.

Background: Beginning in 1946, residues and wastes from Mallinckrodt’s St. Louis uranium processing facility in downtown St. Louis were improperly stored on property near the St. Louis airport and another site near Coldwater Creek. The bulk of the waste, which consisted of low-level radioactive contamination commingled with metals from uranium processing activities, was removed in the past, but residual contamination lingers.

A 2025 study published by the Journal of the American Medical Association claimed to have found an increased rate of cancer for people who grew up living close to Coldwater Creek. The study based its analysis on a cohort of more than 4,200 people who participated in the St. Louis Baby Tooth–Later Life Health Study. From 1958 to 1970, individuals in that study donated their baby teeth to assess exposure to atmospheric nuclear weapons testing.

Since the 1990s, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has been cleaning up the creek and surrounding areas under the Formerly Utilized Sites Remedial Action Program.

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PJM gets emergency approval to curtail data centers, large loads during hot weather

PJM gets emergency approval to curtail data centers, large loads during hot weather

Under the Department of Energy order, the PJM Interconnection can curtail power to data centers with backup generation as a last resort before instituting rolling blackouts.

Published May 19, 2026

Senior Reporter

An aerial view of large industrial buildings near homes.
An Amazon Web Services data center in Stone Ridge, Va. The PJM Interconnection will be able to curtail data centers and other large loads that have backup generation under an emergency order issued May 18, 2026, by the U.S. Department of Energy. Nathan Howard via Getty Images

Dive Brief:

  • The PJM Interconnection can curtail data centers and other large loads that have backup generation under an emergency order issued Monday by the U.S. Department of Energy.
  • PJM on Sunday asked to be able to direct transmission owners and electric utilities in its Mid-Atlantic and Midwest footprint for permission to curtail those facilities if needed for three days starting May 18 because of hot weather combined with planned power plant maintenance outages.
  • PJM said it expected to have less than 5,800 MW of reserves during its May 18 peak, and that Maryland and Virginia could be especially stressed by the unseasonably hot weather.

Dive Insight:

Power plant and transmission owners often take their facilities offline in the spring for maintenance so they are prepared for the summer, PJM noted. The grid operator said it expected power plants totaling more than 40 GW would be offline for planned outages on May 18.

“The projected level of generation outages coupled with the forecasted demand raises a significant risk of emergency conditions that could jeopardize electric reliability and public safety,” PJM said.

The curtailments would be a last resort before ordering rolling blackouts, according to the DOE’s order, issued under the Federal Power Act’s section 202(c). Only large energy consumers with backup generation would be affected.

“The employment of this backup generation is expected to reduce stress on the grid,” the DOE said. “This will permit orderly, safe, and secure operations during PJM’s hot weather conditions.”

There are significant amounts of backup generation in the United States that have remained largely untapped during grid emergencies, according to the DOE.

“Deployment of backup generation resources (whether auxiliary, standby, directly-connected, battery storage or other, and whether synchronized or not to the bulk power system) at data centers (including, but not limited to, hyperscaler facilities), and at other large load industrial and commercial customer sites, can prevent avoidable blackouts, thereby saving lives and reducing costs to the American people,” the department said.

In January, the DOE issued similar emergency orders to PJM, Duke Energy Carolinas and Duke Energy Progress, and the Electric Reliability Council of Texas.

PJM said on Monday that it had issued “maximum generation” and “load management” alerts for May 19, with a “hot weather” alert in place for most of the PJM footprint.

Also, the grid operator activated demand response customers in parts of the Mid-Atlantic and Dominion regions. The grid operator said it called on pre-emergency demand response for the Baltimore Gas and Electric, Dominion and Potomac Electric Power Co. areas on Monday to address local transmission constraints and to preserve the run-time of generators that will be needed for the hot weather and higher electricity demand expected on Tuesday and Wednesday.

For three days starting on Tuesday, PJM expected its peak load to hit 134,027 MW, 135,961 MW and 119,103 MW.

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Rapidly Growing California Wildfire Threatens Contaminated Nuclear Reactor Site

"Rapidly Growing California Wildfire Threatens Contaminated Nuclear Reactor Site"

https://gizmodo.com/rapidly-growing-california-wildfire-nears-contaminated-nuclear-reactor-site-2000761295

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Rockefeller Foundation, Temasek Aim to Increase Philanthropic Support for Nuclear Energy

The foundations formed the Global Coalition for Nuclear Philanthropy to mobilize capital for nuclear energy deployment. 

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Thursday, May 14, 2026

Mid-sized solar could help bring down electricity bills in Pennsylvania

Mid-sized solar could help bring down electricity bills in Pennsylvania

Distributed solar developers say they could build gigawatts of projects to help ease the state’s power crunch — if lawmakers and regulators set clear rules.

By Jeff St. John
13 May 2026


A distributed solar system on the roof of a warehouse owned by EQT Real Estate in Mountain Top, Pennsylvania (Black Bear Energy)

Pennsylvania needs more energy. Data centers are pushing demand skyward, utilities can’t build new capacity fast enough, and electric bills are on the rise. Medium-sized solar installations — smaller than utility-scale farms but larger than home rooftop arrays — could help ease the pressure.

But state lawmakers, utilities, regulators, and solar developers are tussling over the rules that govern such installations, and it’s unclear whether new legislation to resolve their disputes will be passed this year. That worries Victoria Stulgis, president of Black Bear Energy.

Last month, her company and its partners celebrated the energization of 4.9 megawatts of solar on the roofs of two warehouses owned by EQT Real Estate in Mountain Top, Pennsylvania. The two projects, developed by Sigma Renewables and Scale Microgrids and managed by Black Bear Energy, are among roughly 2,100mid-sized generation projects being planned in the state, most of them distributed solar.

What makes these projects possible is Pennsylvania’s Alternative Energy Portfolio Standards Act, a 2004 law allowing medium-sized projects that generate power with a range of technologies, from solar and wind to waste biomass and coal-bed methane, to earn a relatively high rate for the energy they feed to the grid.

After years of battling with utilities, solar developers won a 2021 decision from the Pennsylvania Supreme Court that laid the groundwork for a rapid expansion of mid-sized projects throughout the state.

But in the past few years, Pennsylvania utilities have cast a pall over that growth with a series of actions that could curtail the revenues these projects can earn, Stulgis said.

“Developers and institutional property owners have invested significant time and capital to develop these solar projects,” she said. Black Bear Energy has completed 15 megawatts of projects, has 22 more megawatts under construction, and has secured interconnection rights for another 106 megawatts across 34 projects, she said.

“Changing those rules midstream would undermine confidence and create real risk for projects already in development,” she said. ​“Some developers are still leaning in, believing there may be a viable path forward, while others are walking away from shovel-ready projects because of the uncertainty.”

Unlike neighboring states such as Maryland, New Jersey, and New York, Pennsylvania hasn’t adopted a program to enable community solar. Such projects are designed to provide enough revenue to spur third-party developers to build mid-sized solar arrays, to which utility customers can subscribe to lower their bills.

Instead, solar projects of up to 3 megawatts in Pennsylvania are compensated through net metering, a system that’s more commonly used with residential rooftop solar and other small-scale installations. The projects earn a close-to-retail rate for power they send to the grid, notably more than the wholesale rate that larger projects earn.

Solar developers argue that the existing rules allow businesses, school districts, public agencies, and farms to offset rapidly rising electricity costs by hosting solar projects. But utilities argue that paying close to retail rates for electricity from these arrays forces them to raise rates on the rest of their customer base — a version of the cost-shift argument that has dogged battles over rooftop solar net-metering programs over the past two decades.

The Pennsylvania Public Utilities Commission supports the utilities’ cost-shift argument. In March testimony before the state’s House Energy Committee, PUCChair Stephen DeFrank said that costs from distributed generation projects moving through the interconnection process are projected to exceed $90 million per year by 2027, and could reach $700 million per year if the more than 2,100 projects seeking to be built ​“proceed under existing rules.”

If utilities aren’t able to recover those costs, they’ll have to increase other rates, he said. Those increases will be ​“first borne by commercial and industrial customers, including small businesses operating on narrow margins,” he said.

The argument for adding solar to lower utility bills

Advocates of distributed solar are pushing back against this cost-shift argument. Rather than increasing everyone’s utility bills, distributed solar will lower utility costs at large, they say, by bringing much-needed new clean generation to a state facing increasing electricity costs driven by the data center boom.

Those are the findings of an April report by Aurora Energy Research commissioned by community-solar developer Dimension Energy. The report analyzed whether building 2 gigawatts of distributed solar by 2030, a number that’s in line with current market growth, would reduce demand for power across the low-voltage distribution grids they’re connected to.

Aurora found that additional solar power could generate a total savings of $1.7billion over the next 20 years, compared with a scenario under which it wasn’t built. Utilities would still need to pay those projects about $780 million over that time. But that would leave just under $1 billion in net savings that could be applied toward lowering utility customers’ energy bills.

“There are multiple mechanisms by which distributed solar can reduce costs,” said Zachary Edelen, a senior associate at Aurora.

For example, there is the roughly $1.2 billion over 20 years that Pennsylvania utilities could save in decreasing ​“capacity procurement obligations,” the costs they pay for resources to keep the grid running when demand for electricity peaks, he said. That change could make a substantial difference in Pennsylvania, which is part of PJM Interconnection, the grid operator serving 13 states and Washington, D.C.

PJM’s skyrocketing capacity costs have been a major factor in pushing up utility rates between 12% and 26% for customers of the state’s major utilities from December 2024 to December 2025. That has driven politicians including Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro (D) to demand reforms from both PJM and the state’s utilities.

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Utah ranchers are finding relief by ‘farming solar’ Important according to Google magic Click to teach Gmail this conversation is not important

On a hillside in Mona, visible from Interstate 15, a solar farm with more than 200,000 panels generates about 80 megawatts of electricity — enough to power more than 25,000 homes.

During growing season, more than 500 sheep graze under and around the panels to maintain the vegetation.

The Clover Creek solar project, which became operational in 2021, has already generated over $1.03 million in property tax revenue — about half of which went to the Juab School District.

Over its 20-year lifespan, the project is expected to make $5.7 million.

“We couldn’t even come close to having the same income doing anything else in agriculture as we’re making producing power.”

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Solar and wind are both projected to surpass nuclear power output in 2026 for the first time — backed by record battery storage

https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/markets/solar-and-wind-are-both-projected-to-surpass-nuclear-power-output-in-2026-for-the-first-time-backed-by-record-battery-storage/ar-AA237JbD
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Thursday, May 7, 2026

SUN DAY Campaign: Wrap-up of News Story Excerpts (New Studies & Data on Sustainable Energy and Climate Change) for April 20-May 3, 2026

SUN DAY CAMPAIGN

(founded 1992)
8606 Greenwood Avenue, Suite #2; Takoma Park, MD 20912-6656 
301-588-4741;  sun-day-campaign@hotmail.com 
  
follow on BlueSky at: @sun-day-campaign.bsky.social
  
April 20–May 3, 2026                                                                                            
To:        Recipients
From:    Ken Bossong, editor  
Re.        News Story Excerpts (New Studies & Data on Sustainable Energy & Climate Change)

Note: News story excerpts provided below do not necessarily reflect the views of the SUN DAY Campaign or any of its respective members.


# # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # #
 
WEEKLY NEWS STORY EXCERPTS  
 
NEW STUDIES, DATA, AND RESOURCES:

Mixed/Multi-Sector:

Renewables Overtake Coal for the First Time as World’s Largest Electricity Source in 2025:
MSN.com, by Everett Sloane, April 22, 2026
and
and
For the first time on record, the world added enough renewable electricity in 2025 to outrun total growth in power demand, pushing fossil fuel generation into outright decline. The milestone was documented in Ember’s “Global Electricity Review 2026”. The result: global fossil fuel generation fell by roughly 0.2% year over year, and coal’s share of the worldwide electricity mix slipped below one-third for the first time. In the U.S., the pattern played out on a smaller but still visible scale. The Energy Information Administration’s monthly generation data shows solar output climbing steadily through 2025 while coal-fired generation continued its long slide.

======================================

Survey Says Support for Wind and Solar Energy Slips:

The Hill, by Ryan Mancini, April 22, 2026

https://thehill.com/policy/energy-environment/5843987-poll-shows-slip-in-wind-solar

A new Gallup poll shows that support for wind and solar energy has slipped, with a majority still favoring those energy alternatives. The poll found that 66 percent of Americans prefer the U.S. to put more emphasis on solar energy and 55 percent prefer the same with wind energy. Both dropped from Gallup’s previous polling on the question in 2021, when 73 percent preferred emphasis on solar and 66 percent preferred emphasis on wind.

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Clean Power Grew U.S. Economy by $150 Billion and Supported 1.4 Million Jobs in 2025:
American Clean Power Association, April 28, 2026
and
According to the latest “Annual Clean Power Market Report” from the American Clean Power Association, the clean power sector invested $79 billion in new projects, supported more than 1.4 million jobs, and accounted for over 90% of all new electricity capacity added to the grid in 2025. Highlights from the report include:
**New Capacity Added: 50.3 GW (91% of all new grid additions)
**Total Economic Contribution: $150 Billion
**Direct Employment: 437,000+ Americans
**Industry Average Wage: $78,000 (15% above national average)
**Landowner Payments: $3.2 Billion in lease income
**State and Local Tax Revenue: $3 Billion
**Political Distribution: 79% of capacity located in Republican districts
**Total Operational Fleet: 363 GW (Enough to power 79 million homes)

====================================

New Report Highlights Clean Energy Investment Trends Amid Policy Uncertainty:
American Council on Renewable Energy, April 28, 2026
and
and
According to the report, “Clean Energy Investment Trends,” prepared for ACORE by S&P Global Energy’s consulting arm CERA Consulting, the clean energy market surged at the end of 2025, and investment in clean energy projects is likely to reach a record high in 2026. M&A surged in 2025—especially in natural gas-fired generation—as AI raced to secure power sources. Q1 2025 M&A exceeded total M&A activity in 2024. Investment in renewable projects in 2026 could surpass 2025 investment as developers race to meet demand growth and claim expiring wind and solar tax credits. 

====================================

U.S. Renewable Energy to Attract $120 Billion in Investment This Year:
Latitude Media, by Catherine Boudreau, April 28, 2026
According to a pair of industry reports from ACORE and the American Clean Power Association, the U.S. renewable energy sector is expected to attract $120 billion in investment this year and could install a record amount of new capacity - up to 62-GW - as developers race to meet demand growth and claim expiring tax credits for solar and wind projects. However, Trump’s permit delays and looming restrictions on China-linked components risk chilling investments. Policy uncertainty - combined with grid interconnection constraints and increasing competition from gas - could also adversely affect some investor interest. By 2028, gas is forecast to surpass onshore wind in newly installed capacity, but continue trailing solar and storage additions through the end of the decade.

===================================

Solar:

Solar as Well as EVs Soared Globally but Oil Fell in 2025:
ReNews.Biz, April 20, 2026
and
and
and
and
According to the International Energy Agency, global energy demand growth slowed in 2025. It reached 1.3% while solar PV became the largest contributor to global energy supply growth for the first time. Electricity demand increased by around 3%, more than twice the rate of overall energy demand growth. Solar PV generation increased by 600 terawatt-hours in 2025, marking the largest structural rise ever recorded for any electricity generation technology in a single year.
Solar PV accounted for more than 25% of the increase in global energy supply, followed by natural gas at 17%. Meanwhile, battery storage was the fastest-growing power sector technology, with around 110-GW of new capacity added during the year. Electric car sales increased by over 20% to more than 20 million units, representing around one in four new car sales worldwide. However, global energy-related CO2 emissions rose by around 0.4% in 2025.

===================================

Coal Mines, Landfills, and the Persistence of Solar Power:
CleanTechnica.com, by Tina Casey, April 23, 2026
The coal-to-solar transition has begun to emerge in the U.S., and the action is beginning to pick up as investors catch on to the land use opportunities presented by placing solar power plants on derelict surface mines as well as landfills and other industrial sites. In fact, the U.S. is sitting on a solar power gold mine of derelict surface mines. In a report last summer, the nonprofit organization Global Energy Monitor applied its coal mine tracking tool to identify 312 surface coal mines around the world that have been at or near the end of their useful lives since 2020. According to GEM’s calculations, those mines could host 103-GW of solar capacity, about enough to power a country like Germany for one year. GEM also spotted additional mining lands that are likely to be idled within the next five years, totaling another 185-GW.

===================================

Commercial Real Estate Companies Have Installed Over 1-GW of Solar Across the U.S.:
Solar Power World, by Kelly Pickerel, April 28, 2026
According to data compiled by solar buyer Black Bear Energy, the U.S. real estate industry has crossed 1-GW of installed on-site solar capacity. The 2025 Real Estate Solar Leaderboards shows that 1.086-GW has been installed across 2,157 projects from over 65 owners and managers. By the end of 2025, Prologis maintained its status as the industrial solar leader with a commanding 310.9-MW portfolio. Meanwhile, Public Storage emerged as the standout story in the 2025 report, claiming the No. 2 spot with 111-MW. Energizing 97.5-MW of solar within the last three years, the company has deployed 1,120 projects through a mix of self-funded initiatives and third-party owned leases for community solar markets, showcasing its commitment to rolling out solar at scale to generate new portfolio value.

===================================

Wind:

Global Wind Installations Hit Record in 2025:
ReNews.Biz, April 20, 2026
According to the Global Wind Energy Council’s “Global Wind Report 2026,” global wind installations reached a record 165-GW in 2025. Further, cumulative global wind capacity surpassed 1,299-GW, cementing wind as a cornerstone of modern energy systems. The council added that annual installations must double by 2030 to align with a net zero pathway and global climate targets.

========================================

U.S. Wind Capacity Additions Forecast to Reach 48-GW by 2030:
Review Energy, April 21, 2026
and
and
and
According to the “U.S. Wind Energy Monitor” report released by Wood Mackenzie, the U.S. wind sector is set to continue its recovery trajectory, with installations forecast to rise to around 11-GW in 2026 from 8.2-GW in 2025. The rebound follows a 49% year-on-year increase in 2025 and positions 2026 as the strongest installation year in five years. A key driver of near-term growth is a 15.4 GW pipeline of projects that have already cleared major commercial hurdles, pointing to incoming growth despite federal opposition, soaring costs, and permitting challenges. Land-based wind is expected to dominate U.S. additions in the next three years, accounting for around 24 GW between 2026 and 2028 (mostly onshore wind). Approximately 64% of this pipeline is already in advanced stages, including projects under construction, which reduces execution risk and improves certainty around delivery timelines. The West leads this year at 64% of connections, driven largely by Pattern Energy’s 3.5-GW SunZia project in NM. The Midwest is set to peak next year, and Texas may claim the top spot in 2028 with around 2.5 GW. Looking further ahead, Wood Mackenzie forecasts 48-GW of new wind capacity additions through 2030, supported by a sizeable pipeline of projects and improving execution visibility across both onshore and offshore segments.

=========================================

The World Is Embracing Offshore Wind - Even as the U.S. Retreats:
Canary Media, by Maria Gallucci, April 21, 2026
Offshore wind development has all but screeched to a halt in the U.S. amid the Trump administration’s unrelenting attacks. But in the rest of the world, it’s another story. Over 9-GW of new offshore wind projects came online last year, up 16% from the previous year’s installations, bringing the world’s total offshore wind capacity to about 92-GW, the Global Wind Energy Council said in its latest annual report. The sector is set to grow even more as nations in Europe and Asia seek out domestic clean power. Between 2027 and 2030, countries other than China are expected to add an average of 11-GW in offshore wind installations every year - almost triple the levels from 2022 to 2024, according to the research firm BloombergNEF. China alone could add the same amount over that three-year period.

=========================================

Bioenergy:

Total U.S. Output of Biofuels Remains Unchanged in January:
U.S. Energy Information Administration, April 27, 2026
and
and
and
The total volume of biofuels produced by the U.S. in January 2026 remained unchanged from the level produced in January 2025, although there were some fluctuations among the competing forms of biofuels. Fuel ethanol’s output rose slightly (up 0.84%) while production of biodiesel increased by 20%. Meanwhile, renewable diesel production fell by 10.34%. The mix of “other” biofuels (e.g., sustainable aviation fuel) remained unchanged. Taken together, fuel ethanol accounted for the largest share (73.17%), followed by renewable diesel (15.85%), biodiesel (7.32%), and “other” biofuels (3/66%).

==========================================

Densified Biomass Fuel Sales at 970,000 Tons in November:
Biomass Magazine, by Erin Krueger, April 27, 2026
According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration’s “Monthly Densified Biomass Fuels Report.” U.S. manufacturers produced approximately 900,000 tons of densified biomass fuel in November. Sales of densified biomass fuel reached 970,000 tons during the month. Domestic sales of densified biomass fuel reached 169,016 tons at an average price of $239.40 per ton. Exports reached 798,240 tons at an average price of $203.33 per ton.

========================================

Storage:

Lots of Storage Applies for Grid Connection Under PJM's New Process:
Renewables Now, by Ivan Shumkov, April 29, 2026
and
and
and
U.S. regional transmission organization PJM Interconnection has received grid-connection applications for 811 new generation projects with a combined capacity of 220 GW, including 66.5-GW of storage and close to 30-GW of renewables. Beyond storage, projects entering the interconnection queue include 106-GW of gas-fired generation, 18-GW of nuclear, 15-GW of solar, 9-GW solar-storage hybrid and 5-GW of wind. Under its new interconnection study process, PJM expects to complete its reviews of the projects in one to two years, depending on the project.

===================================

Electric Vehicles:

Used Electric Car Sales Hit a Record High in March:
Inside EVs, by Tim Levin, April 20, 2026
Used EV sales are bouncing back strongly after the end of EV tax credits in September.
In March, according to Cox Automotive, Americans bought 42,924 secondhand electric cars. That is by far the best month for used EVs since Congress eliminated all EV tax credits at the end of the third quarter of 2025. From October through February, monthly used EV sales numbered roughly 30,000, plus or minus a couple-thousand units, according to Cox. But that's not all. Last month's used EV sales represented a new record, surpassing August's 40,960 units. That previous record came at the height of the tax-credit-fueled EV-buying frenzy, so topping it this quickly is impressive.
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