Axios

Interior Secretary David Bernhardt said Saturday that the Trump administration is "about to finalize a leasing plan" to sell rights for oil drilling in Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, Bloomberg reports.

The intrigue: Some of America's biggest banks are cutting off financing for Arctic oil and gas projects.

Overall energy use from data centers has increased slightly over the past decade, but improved efficiency means that they're using less energy per operation, according to a new analysis.

Why it matters: Ultra-efficient server farms have kept energy consumption from growing as fast as data use. But with 5G and AI on the horizon, new innovations will be needed to prevent an explosion in energy use.

Politicians, corporations, the media and activists are talking about climate change more than ever — but most Americans are not.

Be smart: If you’re reading this on social media, you’re probably the exception, not the rule. Just 9% of Americans talk about climate change often, surveys by Yale and George Mason University indicate.

A federal judge on Thursday overturned a 2018 Trump administration directive that sought to speed up energy leases on public land by limiting the amount of time the public could comment.

Why it matters: U.S. Chief Magistrate Judge Ronald Bush's decision voids almost a million acres of leases in the West, according to The Washington Post. It's a victory for environmentalists, who tried to block the change as part of an effort to protect the habitat of the at-risk greater sage grouse.

• The ruling invalidated five oil and gas leases in Nevada, Utah, and Wyoming, and affected 104,688 square miles of greater sage-grouse habitat, per The Associated Press.
• Leases in greater sage-grouse habitat will return to allowing 30 days of public comment and administrative protest.

The big picture: From Axios' Amy Harder, this is the latest in a long and convoluted list of regulatory rollbacks the Trump administration is pursuing on environmental rules that courts are, more often than not, rebutting. With Congress gridlocked on these matters, expect the courts to be the default way Trump's agenda faces checks (unless, of course, a Democrat wins the White House this November).

A sweeping energy bill boosting federal support for everything from renewable energy to cybersecurity may get a vote as soon as next week.

Driving the news: The bipartisan leaders of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) and Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.), introduced the American Energy Innovation Act yesterday.

Wind power has overcome hydroelectricity as the top renewable source of electricity generation in America, the U.S. Energy Information Administration said this week.