It’s hot in Houston. Thousands of people are without electricity.

Current conditions: Schools are closed in Delhi due to intense heat. • A freak storm dropped fist-sized hailstones on a town in northern Poland. • Forecasters expect more tornadoes in the Midwest today.

THE TOP FIVE

1. Houston power outages persist as temperatures soar

Many homes remain without power in Houston after the violent storms that ravaged the region last Thursday. About 150,000 people were still waiting for the lights to come back on Monday night, and the weather is getting hot, with temperatures lingering around 90 degrees Fahrenheit and a heat index near 100 F. Anyone without access to electricity and the air conditioning suffers. The city opened dozens of cooling centers to help provide relief. The area’s electricity provider, CenterPoint Energy, said it expects restoration efforts to continue through Wednesday.

X/NWSHouston

2. Tesla shareholder group targets Musk’s pay package

A group of Tesla shareholders, including New York City Comptroller Brad Lander, SOC Investment Group, Amalgamated Bank and others, have written to the company’s investors urging them to vote against Tesla’s wage plan. $56 billion from CEO Elon Musk next month. The Wall Street Journalreported. “Even if Tesla’s performance fails, the Board has yet to ensure that Tesla has a full-time CEO who is adequately focused on the long-term sustainable success of our company,” wrote the group of shareholders. Shareholders will vote at the company’s annual meeting on June 13 on whether to ratify Musk’s 2018 pay plan, which a judge struck down in January. The letter also says shareholders should not vote to re-elect board members Kimbal Musk (Elon’s brother) and James Murdoch (Elon’s friend), suggesting they are too closely tied to the CEO.

3. Battery fire at California energy storage site finally extinguished

A fire at a battery storage site in San Diego County appears to have been extinguished after burning for several days and nights, Heatmap’s Matthew Zeitlin reported. “There is no visible smoke or active fire at the scene,” Cal Fire, the state fire protection agency, said yesterday. The fire broke out Wednesday at the Gateway Energy Storage Facility, a 250-megawatt battery electric storage system in Otay Mesa, which is immediately adjacent to San Diego’s eastern border and the northern border of Mexico and near Richard J. Donovan State. penitentiary establishment. Fires are a recurring problem for the battery electric storage industry, which could partly explain why, according to a Heatmap poll, it is the least popular form of carbon-free energy among the general public.

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4. Pope calls climate change “path to death”

Pope Francis called climate change a “path to death” in an interview with CBS Evening News. “Unfortunately, we have reached a point of no return,” he said. “It’s sad, but that’s how it is. Global warming is a serious problem. The pope has been very outspoken on the climate crisis, urging governments to stop using fossil fuels and framing the state of the environment as a moral issue. Last week, the Vatican hosted a climate conference focused on building resilience as the crisis intensifies. This resulted in the signing of a protocol that urges rich countries to finance adaptation and protection of the world’s poorest, and calls for an end to fossil fuel subsidies, among other priorities.

5. Light-duty electric vehicles overtake rail in U.S. electricity consumption

Here’s an interesting little statistic for you: In 2023, light-duty electric vehicles consumed more electricity than the nation’s railroads, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. Annual electricity consumption by railways has hovered around 7,000 gigawatt hours (GWh) since 2003, making it the largest electricity end-use category in the transportation sector. But that changed last year when electric vehicles took the top spot, consuming 7,596 GWh. The EIA notes that this is nearly five times the amount of electricity consumed by electric vehicles in 2018. The figures highlight two trends: the limited expansion of U.S. rail transportation and the explosive growth in electric vehicle sales.

EIA

THE KICKER

“I watch their jaws drop and the surprise of ‘Where did that come from?’ ‘Is it an hour from Boise?’ –Chris Geroro, southeast Oregon fly fisherman, describes the beauty of the Owyhee River watershed, one of the largest areas of pristine wilderness in the country that is also ideal for green development .