"Duke Energy Backs Off Renewables After North Carolina Cuts Climate Goal"
"The state repealed the utility’s 2030 emissions target in July. Duke’s response? A plan to slash solar and wind, double down on gas — and burn more coal."

EJToday is a daily weekday digest of top environment/energy news and information of interest to environmental journalists, independently curated by Editor Joseph A. Davis. Sign up below to receive in your inbox. For queries, email EJToday@SEJ.org. For more info, read an EJToday FAQ. Plus, follow EJToday on social media at @EJTodayNews, and flag stories of note by including the @EJTodayNews handle on your posts. And tell us how to make EJToday even better by taking this brief survey.
Want to join the EJToday team? Volunteer time commitments can vary from just an hour a month up to a daily contribution, and would involve helping to curate content of interest. To learn more, reach out to the director of publications, Adam Glenn, at sejournaleditor@sej.org.
Note: Members have additional options to choose from (you'll need your log-in info).
"The state repealed the utility’s 2030 emissions target in July. Duke’s response? A plan to slash solar and wind, double down on gas — and burn more coal."
"The Trump administration has begun prioritizing the review of new, potentially hazardous chemicals used in data centers that public health advocates and environmental attorneys warn could endanger workers, communities and the environment."
"When faced with testimony that Zug Island’s EES Coke Battery is one of Michigan’s worst sulfur dioxide polluters, an attorney for the facility said Monday: “So what?” The DTE Energy-owned facility was “permitted to do so,” said Michael Hindelang, attorney for the utility and its subsidiaries that are defendants in the EPA’s Clean Air Act lawsuit over the emissions."
"The Environmental Protection Agency announced earlier this month that it would stop making polluting companies report their greenhouse gas emissions to it, eliminating a crucial tool the US uses to track emissions and form climate policy. Climate NGOs say their work could help plug some of the data gap, but they and other experts fear the EPA’s work can’t be fully matched."
"Nearly 85% of the 13.1 million acres the Trump administration is opening to coal leasing is private or state-owned and unlikely to be mined anytime soon, except for land adjacent to existing coal mines, analysts say."
"On March 1, under a clear sky, hundreds of people flocked to Colorado’s Rocky Mountain National Park—not to picnic but to protest. Two weeks earlier, the National Park Service had fired roughly 1,000 employees."
"Federal agents grabbed and shoved journalists in a hallway outside a New York City immigration court on Tuesday, sending one to the hospital in the latest clash between authorities enforcing President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown and members of the public seeking to observe and document their actions."
"Researchers across the United States and the world who raced to protect climate data, public reports and other information from the Trump administration’s budget cuts, firings and scrubbing of federal websites are launching their own climate information portals."
"Brazil's president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva announced a $1 billion investment in the Tropical Forest Forever Facility (TFFF) to support forest conservation this week at a United Nations event in New York."
"On Tuesday evening, with the federal government on the brink of a shutdown, Interior Secretary Doug Burgum took to social media to tout the agency’s deployment of autonomous lawnmowers on the National Mall and at several other National Park sites."
"The Trump administration announced on Tuesday that it planned to relax a Biden-era rule that requires grocery stores, air-conditioning companies, semiconductor plants and others to sharply and rapidly reduce some powerful greenhouse gases used in cooling equipment."
"In recent years, Pennsylvania regulators have tried to clamp down on roadway spreading of tens of millions of gallons of oil and gas “brines,” high-salt liquids that can be laced with toxic metals and radioactive material. The industry is pushing back."
"New Jersey’s Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) has sued Pfizer, Johnson & Johnson, Honeywell and several real estate companies over a site in Morris Plains where toxic waste remained from a now-shuttered pharmaceutical plant."
"Pope Leo XIV took aim Wednesday at skeptics who “ridicule those who speak of global warming,” as he strongly embraced Pope Francis’ environmental legacy and made it his own in some of his strongest and most extensive comments to date."
"EPA is trying to complete an agencywide restructuring effort while also weakening marquee regulations in October and November. Now it might have to do that in the midst of a government shutdown."