Azerbaijan has selected its minister of ecology — a former state oil executive — to helm the United Nations climate talks later this year, in a move that stands to fuel debate about the oil and gas industry’s role in international negotiations aimed at reducing fossil fuel use.

Mukhtar Babayev worked for the country’s state-owned oil company SOCAR for nearly 25 years before taking his current post as minister of ecology and natural resources in 2018.

This Election Day, Texas voters will decide whether or not to open up billions of dollars to support natural gas power plants.

Proponents of the measure tout it as a way to improve the state’s electric grid — which infamously failed in a massive winter storm in February 2021, leading to the deaths of 246 people, or over 750 by one investigation.

The Biden administration plans to schedule three oil and gas lease sales in the Gulf of Mexico over the next five years, a reversal of the president’s campaign promise to stop all new offshore drilling under his administration. 

The Interior Department, which oversees oil leases, said the sales are necessary because of last year’s clean-energy legislation, the Inflation Reduction Act. The agency said the law mandated that millions of acres of oil and gas leases needed to be offered by the administration in exchange for the expansion of offshore wind projects.

President Joe Biden took another ax to American energy Wednesday with the cancellation of Trump-era leases for oil and gas development in Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

In 2017 through the landmark Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, Congress opened up a 1.6-million-acre patch along Alaska’s north coast for drilling leases. The section amounts to less than 10 percent of the entire refuge, which spans 19.6 million acres in northeast Alaska and is about the size of South Carolina.

New York, beginning in 2026, will prohibit gas stoves and heating systems for new construction of buildings seven stories or less, according to reports.

The Associated Press reported that a law negotiated between New York Gov. Kathy Hochul, a Democrat, and fellow party members in the legislature is included in the state budget. The legislation also gives the Empire State a head start in the race among several states looking to pass similar bans they say are intended to reduce emissions from buildings.

New York lawmakers passed a state budget Tuesday that bars the use of natural gas in new residential buildings, the first such law in the nation.

The provision will take effect in 2026 for buildings seven stories and shorter and in 2029 for all other buildings. Gov. Kathy Hochul (D) is expected to sign it into law.

New York State Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie (D) praised the budget and called it essential to achieving the goals of the Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act (CLCPA), a 2019 climate law that sets a target of cutting emissions by 40 percent by 2030.

Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm fielded questions on her department's proposed efficiency standards for gas and electric stove appliances Thursday, reiterating to lawmakers that there is currently no plan to ban gas stoves.