The week in 5 numbers: Utilities make it rain, wildfire costs rage on

How much investor-owned utilities could spend on grid upgrades and expansions by 2029, according to the Edison Electric Institute. Demand is rising, and generation investments as a share of the industry’s total capital expenditures have risen for four straight years, the trade group said.

What the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board and Blackrock’s Global Infrastructure Partners will pay to acquire Allete after the Minnesota Public Utilities Commission unanimously approved the sale. Regulators said the benefits of the deal to ratepayers outweighed the risks of private equity ownership.

The percentage by which projected U.S. renewable energy deployments shrank compared to estimates issued last year by the International Energy Agency. The agency revised its projections due to changes enacted by the Trump administration, which include phasing out federal tax credits, new import restrictions, the suspension of new offshore wind leasing and restricting the permitting of onshore wind and solar projects on federal land, it said.

The amount Solar For All funding plaintiffs say the federal government is illegally withholding in a lawsuit filed this week in the U.S. District Court for the District of Rhode Island. The plaintiffs argue that the executive branch did not have the statutory authority to rescind the funding, even after Congress repealed large parts of the Inflation Reduction Act, as Congress “did not repeal the Solar for All program retroactively.”

The latest total of insurance claims related to the Eaton and Palisades fires in Southern California. That exceeds the $18 billion California just added to the state Wildfire Fund, which reimburses utilities for fire-related claims. A new paper argues rising damages from wildfires necessitate a change in how lawmakers, regulators and courts think about cost-sharing.