Secretary Wright joined Governor Glenn Youngkin at the Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility highlighting the importance and impacts of the One Big Beautiful Bill (OBBB).   WASHINGTON—U.S. Secretary of Energy Chris Wright joined Governor Glenn Youngkin and business leaders today at the Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility. Secretary Wright participated in a roundtable with business leaders and Governor Youngkin to discuss the powerful impacts of President Trump’s OBBB and DOE’s ongoing effort to build AI capabilities—highlighting how the bill’s investments in next-generation AI will build on the groundbreaking science and innovation being driven across DOE’s National Labs. At the Lab, Secretary Wright saw firsthand its leadership in next-generation nuclear science technology, STEM workforce development, and introduced the new MOLLER experiment, a groundbreaking scientific initiative of national significance. Secretary Wright toured the Continuous Electron Beam Accelerator Facility (CEBAF), one of the world’s most advanced particle accelerator for probing the quark structure of atomic nuclei, discoveries that will fuel the imagination and provide the foundational understanding for a wide range of technologies.  “Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility is driving world-class science, training the next generation of STEM leaders, and advancing technologies that will strengthen America’s energy future,” said Secretary Wright. “Thanks to the One Big Beautiful Bill, we’re investing in the breakthroughs happening here and across our National Labs to unleash American energy dominance, lead the world in AI innovation and ensure the U.S. stays ahead of strategic competitors.” “Jefferson Lab, one of the Department of Energy’s 17 National Laboratories, is a world leader in nuclear research and nuclear science, as well as the largest production facility for intelligence,” said Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin. “The critical work that we’ve done here in Virginia to support facilities like JLab put us in a strong position to be the federal government’s number-one partner in unleashing all-American, all-of-the-above energy.

Oil advanced in a choppy session after a Trump administration trade official said he expected additional tariffs on India as a result of the country’s Russian crude purchases. West Texas Intermediate for October delivery climbed more than 1% to settle above $63 a barrel after trade adviser Peter Navarro said he expected US tariffs on India to double on Aug. 27 as a penalty for Russian oil purchases. Brent gained to settle near $68. For the past 10 sessions, US oil futures have been locked in a tight range between about $62 and $65 a barrel. Investors are monitoring progress toward a Russia-Ukraine ceasefire following a series of high-level talks brokered by President Donald Trump. The US has worked to set up a meeting between the warring sides, though the Kremlin so far has proved noncommittal. Any peace deal may lead to fewer restrictions on Russia’s crude exports, although Moscow has largely kept its oil flowing despite an array of sanctions. Investors also continued to parse a mixed US crude stockpile report from Wednesday that included the biggest overall decline since mid-June but a seventh straight weekly buildup at the storage hub of Cushing, Oklahoma. The delivery point for West Texas Intermediate futures has seen a recent surge in supplies from the Permian Basin. Oil has dropped more than 10% this year on concerns that US tariffs will hurt economic growth just as OPEC+ nations are returning idled production, raising expectations for a glut once peak summer demand ends. US gasoline stockpiles also declined for a fifth straight week, offering a reminder that, while many traders expect a surplus later this year, global inventories are still abnormally low. Jet fuel demand remains strong. “The market continues to weigh a mix of bullish and bearish drivers that, which together with thin

The US and European Union took the next steps to formalize their trade pact, detailing plans that could reduce tariffs on European automobiles within weeks while opening the door to new potential discounts for steel and aluminum. The joint statement issued Thursday advances the preliminary deal announced a month ago, by including specific benchmarks for the EU to secure its promised sectoral tariff discounts on cars, pharmaceuticals and semiconductors, as well as new commitments to cooperate on economic security matters, food standards and digital trade. President Donald Trump has repeatedly praised the sweeping US-EU trade framework, extolling it as “a big deal” in a Monday White House meeting with foreign leaders including European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen.  The deal provides predictability and “delivers for our citizens & companies, and strengthens transatlantic relations,” von der Leyen said in a post on the social-media platform X. The development underscores the nature of trade talks under Trump, with some initial, broad pronouncements of deals giving way to weeks – or more – of work to hammer out detailed agreements. Many of them are also tied to sweeping policy changes that could take time to materialize. For example, Trump already imposed a flat 15 percent rate on most European goods – half the 30 percent he’d previously threatened. But the US promise to extend that lower levy to autos and auto parts now hinges on the EU formally introducing a legislative proposal to eliminate a host of its own tariffs on US industrial goods and provide “preferential market access” for some US seafood and agricultural products. Car Relief The statement outlines choreographed action on both sides of the Atlantic, with the US codifying reduced auto tariffs once the EU “formally introduces the necessary legislative proposal to enact” its own promised tariff reductions. The discounted 15 percent tariffs on

Hackers linked to the Russian government have been exploiting a vulnerability in Cisco networking devices to target critical infrastructure organizations, the FBI said on Wednesday. “In the past year, the FBI detected the actors collecting configuration files for thousands of networking devices associated with US entities across critical infrastructure sectors,” the bureau said in an alert. The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency lists energy among 16 critical infrastructure sectors. The hackers, whom the FBI linked to the Russian Federal Security Service’s Center 16, have been taking advantage of a bug in Cisco’s IOS software, tracked as CVE-2018-0171, to execute arbitrary code on unpatched and end-of-life network switches made by Cisco and Rockwell Automation. In some cases, the attackers modified configuration files to gain access to the devices and conduct reconnaissance focused on “protocols and applications commonly associated with industrial control systems,” according to the FBI. FSB, aka Berserk Bear, Dragonfly The FSB’s Center 16, which has conducted operations that researchers track using the names “Berserk Bear” and “Dragonfly,” has spent more than a decade penetrating computer systems by exploiting networking devices’ use of unencrypted protocols, the FBI said. Cisco researchers on Wednesday published their own account of the Russia-linked group, which they call Static Tundra. The group focuses on telecommunications, education and manufacturing organizations around the world, Cisco said, “with victims selected based on their strategic interest to the Russian government,” mostly in Ukraine and its allies. Both the FBI and Cisco linked the FSB’s Center 16 to the SYNful Knock malware, which Google detected in four countries, including Ukraine, in 2015. Cisco said the group’s operations against Ukrainian targets have increased significantly since Moscow expanded its invasion of Ukraine in 2022. “Static Tundra was observed compromising Ukrainian organizations in multiple verticals,” Cisco said, “as opposed to previously more limited,

Thermal and renewable energy generating facilities in the PJM Interconnection have surplus interconnection capacity that could support about 153 GW of solar, wind and storage, according to a working paper released by University of California, Berkeley, researchers earlier this month. However, the loss of Inflation Reduction Act clean energy tax credits reduces the total renewable energy and storage potential that could economically be built using the surplus capacity to about 106 GW, according to the study. PJM had a peak load of about 160 GW on June 23, during a heat wave. The analysis comes as PJM has been warning it may lack sufficient power supplies to meet growing electric demand, mainly driven by data center development. Taking advantage of existing, but little-used, interconnection capacity could allow PJM to meet its near-term needs with solar and storage, which can be built within two years compared with up to about seven years for a gas-fired power plant, according to Umed Paliwal, one of the report’s authors and a senior scientist at Berkeley’s Goldman School of Public Policy. “We need firm capacity in the PJM grid in the next three to four years,” Paliwal said Tuesday. PJM has about 52 GW of thermal power plants with 15% capacity factors — a measure of how often a power plant runs — as well as 25 GW of solar and wind projects, which operate at 19% and 16% capacity factors, respectively, leaving significant amounts of unused interconnection capacity at those sites, according to the study. The underused points of interconnection at the thermal plants could support about 74 GW of solar and 5 GW of wind by 2030, according to the study. Also, adding about 23 GW of 6-hour battery storage at existing renewable energy sites could support an additional 28 GW of solar

Dive Brief: Managed charging programs can turn flexible electric vehicle loads into a grid resource capable of generating $30 billion in annual utility savings, according to research from ev.energy, a managed charging provider in the United States, and The Brattle Group. Each actively managed vehicle can create up to $575 in avoided costs for utilities, leading to a 10% reduction in all customer electric bills by 2035 — whether they own an EV or not, according to the report. Programs that include a vehicle-to-grid bidirectional charging component could more than double the benefits. While bidirectional programs are still grappling with technical and policy challenges, managed charging is ready for full deployment, ev.energy CEO Nick Woolley said in an interview. “From a regulatory perspective, we don’t need to do more pilots. We need to scale these programs,” he said. Dive Insight: Demand from growing EV adoption is beginning to show up on the electric grid, creating simultaneous opportunities and hurdles for utilities, Woolley said. Absent a proactive approach to managing the demand, power companies will face premature transformer failures, require emergency system upgrades and see customer bills rise higher, according to the report. With managed charging, they can create a more decentralized, optimized and affordable grid. “The biggest source of demand growth is going to be electric vehicles on the energy system in the 2030s, and that really means, from a utility perspective, that if they don’t control and manage that resource, they could end up building lots of expensive additional generation to meet the demand,” Woolley said. Last year, an NREL report looking out to 2050 noted that “EVs are expected to be the largest source of electricity demand growth, and will require investments in generation, transmission, and distribution systems.” It also said that smart integration of EVs “can strengthen the grid by providing