Tropical Storm Elsa is currently moving from North Carolina to Virginia, where up to four inches of rain are expected, with isolated totals of up to six inches, the National Hurricane Center said Thursday evening.
Catch up quick: Elsa killed at least one person in Florida after making landfall in the state and unleashing a suspected tornado that wounded 10 others at a Navy base campground in southeast Georgia on Wednesday, AP reports.
Working from home increased the energy consumption per employee at gaming giant Ubisoft to 3,882 kilowatt hours per employee last year, up from 3,064 in 2019, according to a company filing.
Why it matters: The change demonstrates the challenge of a company trying to lower its carbon footprint while modernizing its approach to work.
California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) on Thursday asked state residents to voluntarily reduce household water usage by 15% due to worsening drought conditions.
State of play: Newsom is yet to issue a California-wide state of emergency or mandate any water use restrictions. However, on Thursday, he expanded his regional drought state of emergency to apply to 50 of the state's 58 counties, which includes about 42% of the population, Newsom said.
A new report from the Energy Information Administration gets to how much the bad Western drought is sapping hydroelectric generation in California.
By the numbers: "In the first four months of 2021, hydroelectric generation in California was 37% less than in the same four months in 2020 and 71% less than during those months in 2019," notes EIA, the Energy Department's independent stats arm.
European regulators on Thursday announced a $1 billion fine against the Volkswagen Group and BMW for running afoul of antitrust rules by "colluding on technical development in the area of nitrogen oxide cleaning."
Driving the news: The European Commission's Margrethe Vestager, the top antitrust official, said the settlement is about "how legitimate technical cooperation went wrong."
The White House is sending increasingly strong signals it will push for a zero-carbon power mandate in the energy and social safety net package Democrats hope to pass using filibuster-proof budget reconciliation rules.
Driving the news: President Biden, in a speech Wednesday, called for the policy that would require emissions-free electricity to provide a significantly growing share of power company sales.
The historic heat wave that struck the Pacific Northwest would have been "virtually impossible without human-caused climate change," an international team of climate researchers said in a new report.
Of note: The World Weather Attribution's analysis, published Wednesday, found that the record-setting heat that triggered wildfires and was linked to hundreds of deaths was a one-in-a-1,000-year event that "would have been at least 150 times rarer without human-induced climate change."
The Oregon State Medical Examiner on Wednesday announced that the death toll in the state associated with the late June Pacific Northwest heat wave reached 116.
Details: The new tally provided by the state police does not offer any details to identify the victims other than age, gender and county of residence. The victims' ages range between 37 and 97.
