Winnie Greco was the mayor’s former director of Asian affairs at City Hall and one of his best fund-raisers. Credit…Nicole Craine for The New York Times
A close adviser to Mayor Eric Adams was suspended from his re-election campaign on Wednesday after giving a journalist cash tucked inside a potato chip bag.
The adviser, Winnie Greco, who was the mayor’s former director of Asian affairs at City Hall and one of his best fund-raisers, had returned to the campaign trail as a volunteer during Mr. Adams’s run for a second term. She had been at the center of controversy after the F.B.I. raided her homes last year as part of a federal investigation into possible Chinese government interference in the 2021 mayor’s race.
On Wednesday, Ms. Greco attended an event with Mr. Adams in Harlem and gave more than $100 in a red envelope stashed inside the snack bag to a reporter for The City, according to an article in the online news outlet. The City promptly reported the incident to the city’s Department of Investigation, and federal prosecutors in Brooklyn contacted the newspaper’s lawyers, according to the newspaper’s account.
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Notable new projects and regulations aim to streamline recycling programs, make recycling less confusing for residents, and more efficiently funnel critical materials into domestic supply chains.
Notable new projects and regulations aim to streamline recycling programs, make recycling less confusing for residents and more efficiently funnel critical materials into domestic supply chains.
Here’s a roundup of recent battery recycling news. What battery recycling trends and news are you tracking? Let us know at waste.dive.editors@industrydive.com.
Princeton NuEnergy opens black mass recycling facility in South Carolina
Princeton NuEnergy, a lithium-ion battery recycling and cathode manufacturing company, said last week its advanced black mass recycling production facility in South Carolina is now fully commissioned and operational.
PNE says the flagship facility is the first commercial-scale advanced black mass and battery-grade cathode active material production facility in the country. The facility is part of PNE’s goal to recycle and produce critical battery minerals in the U.S., especially as federal policy focuses more on establishing domestic energy production and supply chains, the company said in a statement.
The facility, located in Chester, South Carolina, has a5,000 metric tons per annum capacity and mainly produces “high-purity” black mass from manufacturing scrap. In 2026, the company expects to expand capacity to 15,000 tpa, with the capability to scale up to 50,000 tpa “as market demand grows,” PNE stated. PNE says the operation can achieve a recovery yield of over 97%.
Read the full story here
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Minnesota utility regulators have approved the state’s first stand-alone energy storage project, an important milestone in Minnesota’s effort to transition to producing completely carbon-free electricity.
The Minnesota Public Utilities Commission approved a site permit for the 150-megawatt Snowshoe Energy Storage Project, which will be built on an 18-acre site west of Rochester, near the town of Byron.
The batteries will store excess electricity produced by nearby solar and wind farms, and then discharge the power during times of high demand — for example, when people return home from work and school and turn on their air conditioners.
Several battery energy storage systems have been built or approved recently in Minnesota in conjunction with solar energy projects, including a facility approved in July in Faribault County, south of Mankato.
But the Snowshoe project, to be developed by Spearmint Energy, a battery system developer based in Miami with an office in Eden Prairie in the Twin Cities area, is the first standalone battery system to be built in the state that will be connected directly to the electric grid.
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New Jersey lawmakers from both chambers questioned energy experts and state officials on August 14 about surging electricity prices, setbacks to offshore wind projects, and the future of New Jersey’s clean energy strategy.
The hearing, held in the shore town of Point Pleasant by the Senate Environment and Energy Committee and the Assembly Environment Committee, featured testimony from the president of the Board of Public Utilities and a diverse lineup of academics, industry leaders, and policy advocates. Their insights revealed both the promise and pitfalls of the state’s ambitious energy transition.
🔍 Speaker Highlights
Christine Guhl-Sadovy – President, NJ Board of Public Utilities
• Announced $100 in bill credits for residential customers to offset recent 20% electricity rate hikes.
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Consumers Energy had planned to retire the J.H. Campbell coal-fired power plant in May, but President Trump ordered it to keep operating, citing an energy emergency that critics say isn’t happening. (Jim West/UCG/Universal Images Group via Getty Images)
A new report finds the Trump administration’s push to keep dirty, aging fossil-fueled power plants from closing down could end up costing U.S. utility customers between $3 billion and nearly $6 billion per year by the end of Trump’s term — and that’s a conservative estimate.
Thursday’s report from consultancy Grid Strategies was commissioned by Earthjustice, the Environmental Defense Fund, the Natural Resources Defense Council, and Sierra Club, four environmental groups that have joined states in challenging the Department of Energy’s use of emergency powers to keep the J.H. Campbell coal plant in Michigan and the Eddystone oil- and gas-burning plant in Pennsylvania running.
Both plants were set to close earlier this year, but the DOE used its emergency authority under Section 202(c) of the Federal Power Act to order them to stay open for 90 days, and it could issue more orders to keep them running beyond that time period.
In July, the DOE issued a report claiming that the country faces threats of massive blackouts if the federal government doesn’t intervene. But critics say that to arrive at this conclusion, the DOE cherry-picked data and ignored the massive amounts of new solar, wind, and battery resources set to come online in the coming years.
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ELKTON, Md. — Debbie Blankenship’s wheelchair carved perfect lines in the grass as she rolled into her backyard garden, passing a wooden arch filled with small grapes, a bush with plump blueberries, and yellow crates filled with sprouting potatoes.
She stopped at a dirt patch with a burial marker for her beagle — the latest of her dogs to die of cancer.
“They are all buried back here. It’s like a pet cemetery,” she said, catching her breath from navigating the hilly terrain. Gazing at the burial site, she spoke about her own long battle with cancer.
For decades, Blankenship chalked up her health problems, including losing her right leg to an infection, to bad luck. Then in 2023, she received a phone call from W.L. Gore & Associates, which makes waterproof membranes such as Gore-Tex and a host of other products. Gore wanted to test Blankenship’s well water for PFOA, a highly toxic “forever chemical” that was used to make PTFE, commonly known as Teflon.
“That’s when the light went off,” she said. She and her dogs were the only members of the household to drink the well water. Her husband and children always drank bottled water.
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