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    Man Who Shot at Pipeline and Power Station Gets 25 Years in Prison

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    Cameron M. Smith, 50, a Canadian who wanted to bring more attention to climate change, was also ordered to pay $2.1 million in restitution for damage he caused in the Dakotas.A Canadian man who, in an attempt to raise awareness about climate change, used a high-powered rifle to fire shots at a pipeline in South Dakota in 2022 and a power station in North Dakota in 2023 was sentenced on Monday to 25 years in federal prison.The man, Cameron M. Smith, 50, who pleaded guilty last September in U.S. District Court in Bismarck, N.D., to two counts of destruction of an energy facility for the vandalism, was also ordered to pay $2.1 million in restitution.In July 2022, Mr. Smith used a high-powered Bushmaster rifle to fire rounds into a transformer and pump station that was part of the Keystone Pipeline in Clark County, in eastern South Dakota, according to court records. The act caused about $500,000 in damage and disrupted the pipeline, which carries oil from Canada through the United States, records show. Electrical service to some customers in North Dakota was also disrupted, prosecutors said.Ten months later, in May 2023, Mr. Smith again used a Bushmaster rifle to shoot at the Wheelock electric substation near Ray, in northwest North Dakota, causing about $1.2 million in damage, court records show. All energy facilities are federally protected, and damaging them can be deemed an act of terrorism if an attack is intended to “affect the conduct of government by intimidation or coercion, or to retaliate,” according to the Justice Department. Judge Daniel Traynor of U.S. District Court in Bismarck, N.D., found that Mr. Smith’s actions had met that definition — a finding reflected in the sentence he handed down.Mr. Smith, whose lawyer said he is autistic, was an online marketer who was renting a small home on the Oregon coast at the time of his arrest. He was not working at the time.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Chile Declares Curfew as Power Outage Sweeps Across Country

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      President Gabriel Boric said electricity was being restored, but the situation remained unstable. Chile’s government imposed a curfew and declared a state of emergency in response to a sweeping blackout that cut electricity to most of the country including the capital, Santiago, on Tuesday.The massive outage, which began in the afternoon, affected eight million households across the country, from the northern port city of Arica to Los Lagos in the country’s south, officials said. In Santiago, it knocked out traffic lights, stranded people in elevators and shut down the subway network.Hours later, the government announced a curfew from 10 p.m. to 6 a.m. in the regions affected by the outage. Schools in those regions will be closed on Wednesday, with about 300,000 students affected, officials said.“Today has been a difficult day for millions of countrymen,” Gabriel Boric, the president, said at a news conference on Tuesday night.By late Tuesday, power had been restored to about four million households, Mr. Boric said. But he warned that the recovery was slow and unstable, and the situation remained precarious.He blamed the country’s power companies for allowing the outage to occur and for not restoring power earlier, adding, “This is outrageous.” The outage was caused by failure of a transmission system, officials said.Soldiers and national police officers were sent to affected regions, officials said, and in Santiago, helicopters circled above the city.Emergency services, hospitals, prisons and airports across the country were operating on backup electricity systems and generators, the national disaster agency said.John Bartlett More

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      California’s Push for Electric Trucks Sputters Under Trump

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      The state will no longer require some truckers to shift away from diesel semis but hopes that subsidies can keep dreams of pollution-free big rigs alive.President Trump’s policies could threaten many big green energy projects in the coming years, but his election has already dealt a big blow to an ambitious California effort to replace thousands of diesel-fueled trucks with battery-powered semis.The California plan, which has been closely watched by other states and countries, was meant to take a big leap forward last year, with a requirement that some of the more than 30,000 trucks that move cargo in and out of ports start using semis that don’t emit carbon dioxide.But after Mr. Trump was elected, California regulators withdrew their plan, which required a federal waiver that the new administration, which is closely aligned with the oil industry, would most likely have rejected. That leaves the state unable to force trucking businesses to clean up their fleets. It was a big setback for the state, which has long been allowed to have tailpipe emission rules that are stricter than federal standards because of California’s infamous smog.Some transportation experts said that even before Mr. Trump’s election, California’s effort had problems. The batteries that power electric trucks are too expensive. They take too long to charge. And there aren’t enough places to plug the trucks in.“It was excessively ambitious,” said Daniel Sperling, a professor at the University of California, Davis, who specializes in sustainable transportation, referring to the program that made truckers buy green rigs.California officials insist that their effort is not doomed and say they will keep it alive with other rules and by providing truckers incentives to go electric.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Why a Memphis Community Is Fighting Elon Musk’s Supercomputer

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      Residents say Mr. Musk’s data center for artificial intelligence is compounding their pollution burden and adding stress on the local electrical grid.Elon Musk, the world’s richest man, is building what he says will be the world’s largest supercomputer. Its electricity needs will rival those of 100,000 homes.The supercomputer’s neighbors in southwest Memphis have a problem with that.The project, part of Mr. Musk’s xAI artificial intelligence business, sits in an old manufacturing plant on more than 550 acres. Before beginning operations there in July, xAI rolled in flatbed trucks loaded with almost 20 mobile power plants, fueled by natural gas, to help meet its electricity demands.Residents of the heavily industrial community — already home to an oil refinery, a steel mill and chemical plants — see no upside. They contend that Mr. Musk’s project has made pollution worse in an area already enveloped in smog.“We’re getting more and more days a year where it is unhealthy for us to go outside,” said KeShaun Pearson, president of Memphis Community Against Pollution and a lifelong resident of the area near the xAI site.The xAI supercomputer center in Memphis is being built at the site of a former appliance factory.Whitten Sabbatini for The New York TimesThe center is to be used to train artificial intelligence models on thousands of powerful computer servers.Whitten Sabbatini for The New York TimesSo far, xAI is using the Memphis facility to develop its artificial intelligence models on a network of thousands of high-powered computer servers. Some of its models are trained on data from Mr. Musk’s social media platform, X.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      As Texas Power Grid Faces New Strains, Renewables Help Meet Demand

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      Texas, the biggest oil-producing state, has turned to solar power and battery storage to see it through extreme weather. But with demand rising, much more power will be needed.During the scorching summer of 2023, the Texas energy grid wobbled as surging demand for electricity threatened to exceed supply. Several times, officials called on residents to conserve energy to avoid a grid failure.This year it turned out much better — thanks in large part to more renewable energy.The electrical grid in Texas has breezed through a summer in which, despite milder temperatures, the state again reached record levels of energy demand. It did so largely thanks to the substantial expansion of new solar farms.And the grid held strong even during the critical early evening hours — when the sun goes down and the nighttime winds have yet to pick up — with the help of an even newer source of energy in Texas and around the country: batteries.The federal government expects the amount of battery storage capacity across the country, almost nonexistent five years ago, to nearly double by the end of the year. Texas, which has already surpassed California in the amount of power coming from large-scale solar farms, was expected to gain on its West Coast rival in battery storage as well.The swift growth of battery storage as a source of power for the electric grid, along with the continued expansion of large-scale solar farms, could not have come at a better time. Texas, like many other states, is facing a surge in its power needs from data centers, new manufacturing plants, cryptocurrency mines, growing residential demand and increasingly intense summer heat. Officials estimate that Texas, already the nation’s largest electricity consumer, could roughly double its demand in just a few years.“Every state is going to go through this. Texas just happens to be the farthest along because we are growing our energy usage first,” said Michael Lee, the chief executive of Octopus Energy U.S., a subsidiary of the British electricity provider. “We’re seeing this in every other state, and all over the world.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Russia Maintains Punishing Pace of Deadly Strikes on Ukrainian Cities

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      A barrage on Vilniansk, a town in the south, killed seven, including three children, as attacks across Ukraine in the past few days have left dozens dead, according to local authorities.A Russian missile attack on a small town in southeastern Ukraine and the fiery inferno that followed killed at least seven civilians, including three children, the country’s authorities said as they surveyed on Sunday the deadly toll of two days of fierce Russian assaults.Yuriy Borzenko, chief doctor of Zaporizhzhia Regional Children’s Hospital, said in a phone interview that, aside from those killed, dozens of others, including a pregnant woman and five 14-year-old girls, were being treated for wounds after the attack on the southeastern town, Vilniansk, which took place on Saturday.The girls were out for a walk together in the afternoon sunshine, Dr. Borzenko said, when explosions from the projectiles tore through the center of the town, engulfing shops, cars and homes in flames. Shrapnel had embedded in the skull of one of the girls, who was left in a coma, he said, “still in between life and death.”“Her parents are in really bad shape, I just saw them,” he added.As the attacks have rained down, President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine has reiterated his plea to loosen restrictions on the use of long-range American missiles known as ATACMS so that Ukraine can target warplanes at Russian air bases before they take to the sky on bombing runs.“Long-range strikes and modern air defense are the foundation for stopping the daily Russian terror,” he said on Sunday in a statement accompanying videos said to show the aftermath of a number of the week’s worst attacks.The strike in Vilniansk was one of a series of attacks across Ukraine, which have killed at least 24 civilians since Friday evening, according to local officials and emergency workers, who said that scores more had been wounded.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      How Electric Car Batteries Might Aid the Grid (and Win Over Drivers)

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      Automakers are exploring energy storage as a way to help utilities and save customers money, turning an expensive component into an industry asset.Electric cars are more expensive than gasoline models largely because batteries cost so much. But new technology could turn those pricey devices into an asset, giving owners benefits like reduced utility bills, lower lease payments or free parking.Ford Motor, General Motors, BMW and other automakers are exploring how electric-car batteries could be used to store excess renewable energy to help utilities deal with fluctuations in supply and demand for power. Automakers would make money by serving as intermediaries between car owners and power suppliers.Millions of cars could be thought of as a huge energy system that, for the first time, will be connected to another enormous energy system, the electrical grid, said Matthias Preindl, an associate professor of power electronic systems at Columbia University.“We’re just at the starting point,” Dr. Preindl said. “They will interact more in the future, and they can potentially support one another — or stress one another.”A large flat screen on the wall of the Munich offices of the Mobility House, a firm whose investors include Mercedes-Benz and Renault, illustrates one way that carmakers could profit while helping to stabilize the grid.The graphs and numbers on the screen provide a real-time picture of a European energy market where investors and utilities buy and sell electricity. The price changes from minute to minute as supply and demand surge or ebb.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Electricity From Coal Is Pricey. Should Consumers Have to Pay?

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      Environmental groups are making a new economic argument against coal, the heaviest polluting fossil fuel. Some regulators are listening.For decades, environmentalists fought power plants that burn coal, the dirtiest fossil fuel, by highlighting their pollution: soot, mercury and the carbon dioxide that is dangerously heating the planet.But increasingly, opponents have been making an economic argument, telling regulators that electricity produced by coal is more expensive for consumers than power generated by solar, wind and other renewable sources.And that’s been a winning strategy recently in two states where regulators forbade utilities from recouping their losses from coal-fired plants by passing those costs to ratepayers. The Sierra Club and the Natural Resources Defense Council, two leading environmental groups, are hoping that if utilities are forced to absorb all the costs of burning coal, it could speed the closures of uneconomical plants.The groups are focused on utilities that generate electricity from coal and also distribute it. Those utilities have historically been allowed to pass their operating losses to customers, leaving them with costly electric bills while the plants emitted carbon dioxide that could have been avoided with a different fuel source, according to the environmental groups.About 75 percent of the nation’s roughly 200 coal-fired power plants are owned by utilities that control both generation and distribution.In 2023, utilities across the United States incurred about $3 billion in losses by running coal-fired power plants when it was cheaper to buy power from lower-cost, less polluting sources, according to RMI, a nonprofit research organization focused on clean energy. About 96 percent of those losses were incurred by plants that controlled both power generation and distribution, the organization said.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Northern Lights Set to Return Tonight as Extreme Solar Storm Continues

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      Electrical utilities said they weathered earlier conditions as persistent geomagnetic storms were expected to cause another light show in evening skies.Night skies in many parts of the Northern Hemisphere are expected to bloom again on Saturday night with the vivid colors of the northern lights, or aurora borealis, as a powerful geomagnetic storm caused by a hyperactive sun persists through the weekend.The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which monitors space weather, said in an update on Saturday that it continued to observe solar activity that could lead to periods of “severe-extreme” geomagnetic storms. The federal agency first issued a warning on Friday as bursts of material from the sun’s surface traveled into Earth’s atmosphere, causing irregularities in power, navigation and communication systems.Major power utilities had largely prepared their electrical grids for the solar storm, and their customers were unaffected.For most people, the solar storm was a gift: It caused ribbons of pink, purple and green light across night skies of much of the United States, Canada and Europe. Where evening skies are clear on Saturday, the lights can be expected again.Known as aurora, the light is caused by particles from the sun interacting with gases in Earth’s atmosphere, and is usually only observed at latitudes closer to the North or South Pole. But on Friday night, residents of lower latitudes, including those in North Carolina and Arizona, saw the dancing lights.Jane Wong, 30, of San Francisco, drove to the Presidio overlooking the Golden Gate Bridge where conditions started out foggy. But at midnight, her wait paid off as the sky started to clear.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More