The Trump administration said Friday it has thawed its temporary freeze on contract grant approvals at the Environmental Protection Agency, with all $3.9 billion in planned spending moving forward.

A media blackout at the agency also appears to have been partially lifted, as a trickle of press releases were issued by the EPA this week. However, the agency has still not posted to its official Twitter feed since President Donald Trump’s Jan. 20 inauguration, and the volume of information flowing from the agency is a fraction of what it was under former President Barack Obama.

The Associated Press and other media outlets reported last week that Trump political appointees had instructed EPA staff not to issue press releases or make posts to the agency’s official social media accounts without prior approval. Contract and grant spending at the agency was also put on hold, prompting confusion and concern among state agencies reliant on federal funding for ongoing environmental programs and pollution clean-ups.

Read more (The Washington Post)

Barely one week into the new administration, we are far enough into the water to see dim shapes of the future ahead—some look more like sharks, some like rocks. Here’s some of what we see as of now:

Department of Energy programs face an undertow. In his confirmation hearing Secretary-designee Rick Perry was surprisingly supportive of DOE’s research and the national labs (for someone who once called to axe the entire agency). But President Donald Trump ordered a broad hiring freeze as a first step toward reducing the federal workforce. There is also reportedly a proposal to eliminate the whole Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy Office (among others) in a broad budget outline that may be released in February. We are gearing up to support the efficiency programs when Congress takes up funding bills for the rest of 2017 in April and for 2018 later this year.

Appliance standards may be treading water for now. Although three recent standards could be subject to repeal under the Congressional Review Act, they do not appear to be prime targets, based on several meetings with congressional staff. On the other hand, five standards that were finalized but not officially published (as well as a manufactured housing standard that was under final review) may be caught in a temporary moratorium on regulations issued by Trump’s chief of staff Reince Priebus.

Read more (American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy)

President Trump signed an order Monday aimed at cutting regulations on businesses, saying that agencies should eliminate at least two regulations for each new one.

The White House later released the text of the order, which added that the cost of any new regulation should be offset by eliminating regulations with the same costs to businesses. It excluded regulations regarding the military.

The impact of the order was difficult to judge based on the president’s remarks. It could be difficult to implement under current law and would concentrate greater power in the Office of Management and Budget, which already reviews federal regulations.

Moreover, any effort to scrap a regulation triggers its own process, complete with draft rules, comment periods, and regulation rewriting. That process can be subject to litigation. At the least, Trump’s proposal would add a new time-consuming requirement for any new congressional legislation or agency regulation on topics as varied as banking, health care, environment, labor conditions and more.

Trump signed the document — which he called “a big one” — at his desk in the Oval Office surrounded by nine small-business owners, who earlier this morning met in the Roosevelt Room.

Read more (The Washington Post)

A national energy marketer offering electricity and natural gas in 10 states and the District of Columbia is trying to pry open monopoly service territory of Dominion Virginia Power, alleging the monopoly utility is conducting an “antagonistic” effort to deny it from offering a renewable energy product.

Direct Energy says it wants to sell 100% renewable resources to residential electricity customers by purchasing from wind and solar systems within the PJM Interconnection power grid that includes Virginia. The residential electricity market is the largest major energy market segment still off limits to competition in Virginia.

In the Southeast, limited consumer choice is available in Florida, Georgia, Kentucky and Tennessee. If Direct Energy and its allies succeed, it could send a strong signal to other states to enable customers to choose their electricity supplier.

The application, filed at the State Corporation Commission (SCC), seeks to capitalize on a provision of the Virginia Electric Utility Regulation Act passed in 2007 that permits an electric supplier to serve customers if it offers a “100% renewable” energy product. But it first wants to clarify certain provisions that until now have kept national energy marketers, as well as third-party solar companies, from deploying power purchase agreements out of the residential market for electricity in Virginia.

Read more (Southeast Energy News)

Some of the world’s most innovative technology companies, from Apple to Facebook to Google, are famous for “acquihires,” or buyouts of far smaller firms that are overflowing with specialists who have skills in important emerging business areas. Apparently, the same is also true when it comes to finding experts in clean energy procurement.

The latest evidence? In mid-January, energy management and sustainable building infrastructure company Schneider Electric snapped up one of the better-known advisory firms in this space, Renewable Choice Energy of Boulder, Colorado, for an undisclosed sum of money. In fact, the latter’s 35-person team is already making joint sales calls with its new colleagues from Schneider Electric.
The deal, considered alongside Edison Energy’s acquisition of Altenex last year, offers another signal of just how important clean energy is becoming to corporate energy strategies.

If anything, we have to work to become more creative.

“Developers don’t have the time and resources to figure out how to get the output of their assets to the market, and you have end users who are eager to get their hands on this capacity,” said Steve Wilhite, senior vice president of energy and sustainability services for Schneider Electric. “We are linking the two sides to make this more accessible.”

Read more (Green Biz)

With President Trump preparing to nominate a ninth justice for the Supreme Court this week, tumult over the crucial vacancy is overshadowing his unprecedented potential to fill the benches of lower federal courts.

A broad refusal by Senate Republicans to approve judicial nominees during the last two years of Obama’s second term means Trump could move quickly to fill 114 vacant federal judge positions. U.S. Courts data shows that to be the most vacancies in at least 20 years.

Trump is a foe of environmental regulations who is working quickly to undo rules, programs and agreements backed by President Obama to slow global warming. By appointing federal judges with similar views, Trump could make it harder for future administrations to secure courtroom approvals for new climate rules for decades to come.

“It’s a very serious problem,” said Glenn Sugameli, an attorney for the nonprofit Defenders of Wildlife who tracks federal judge vacancies and nominations. “It does create more opportunities for bad judges to get confirmed, for bad decisions to be issued, and for courts to tilt.”

Read more (Climate Central)

Amazon’s launch of its “Go” store — essentially a grocery with no cashiers — has fueled a debate about how automation will destroy jobs.

There are 3.4 million workers with some variant of the title “cashier” in America, according to the Bureau of Labor and Statistics, making it one of the most common jobs in the country. But Amazon’s store eliminates this role. And soon, automated taxis, stores and restaurants could wipe out many millions of similar jobs across the service sector.

Experts are increasingly grappling with what technology, automation and artificial intelligence mean for the average worker. But it’s not all bad news.

For example, a recent Planet Money podcast noted that improvements in navigation and tracking technology enabled UPS to increase the number of packages that a driver can deliver in a day. Due to these improvements, the total compensation for a UPS driver has doubled over the past 20 years.

Read more (Green Tech Media)

Arthur H. Rosenfeld, a physicist who became widely known as the father or energy  efficiency for championing energy-saving requirements for appliances and buildings, died on Friday in Berkeley, Calif. He was 90.

The cause was related to pneumonia, said Adam Gottlieb, a marketing and outreach specialist with the California Energy Commission, with which Dr. Rosenfeld worked for 10 years.

His work, embraced at first in California under Gov. Jerry Brown, gained national attention and helped lay the foundation for federal energy efficiency rules that are in place today.

Read more (The New York Times)