UTILITIES: Amid consternation over blackouts across New Orleans after Hurricane Ida, Entergy floats the idea of moving its headquarters out of the Louisiana city and sets off ripples of concern. (NOLA.com, WVUE)

TRANSITION:
• A new study finds Appalachia stands to economically benefit the most from onshore wind and utility-scale solar deployment over the next decade. (CleanTechnica)
• Mayors from 24 cities across the Southeast call for Congress and the White House to adopt national clean energy standards to create jobs and speed the transition to renewable energy and electric vehicles. (WFAE)

OIL & GAS:
• Royal Dutch Shell’s sale of its Permian Basin oil and gas business will help the company claim emissions cuts while also ridding it of an asset that didn’t have the cost efficiencies held by oil and gas giants in the region, such as buyer ConocoPhillips, whose purchase represented a doubling down on shale oil. (S&P Global, Reuters)
• Rising natural gas prices are seen as a mixed blessing in Louisiana, where petrochemical companies will benefit while ratepayers see higher bills. (Greater Baton Rouge Business Report)

OVERSIGHT: EPA’s watchdog will audit the agency’s work at a contaminated Alabama site whose inclusion on the Superfund priority list eventually led to prison time for a state official and the resignation of a senior political appointee. (E&E News, subscription)

WIND: Dominion Energy says it will use union workers to build and maintain its offshore wind project in Virginia. (Daily Energy Insider)

SOLAR: A renewables company completes construction of a 227 MW solar farm in Alabama that will support a Facebook data center. (Daily Energy Insider)

HYDROELECTRIC:
• A Kentucky college completes work on a 2.64 MW hydroelectric dam that will produce about half the electricity the campus uses in a year. (Associated Press)
• A West Virginia mayor and manager of a hydroelectric dam want to raise a lake’s water levels to produce more power, but the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is concerned that doing so might compromise flood control. (Charleston Gazette-Mail)

GRID: Increasingly extreme weather driven by climate change stresses Oklahoma’s power grid, resulting in rolling blackouts and demonstrating the need for reliability improvements. (KOSU)

BIOGAS:
• A Virginia planning commission prepares to consider two renewable projects: Dominion Energy and Smithfield Foods’ proposal to turn methane from hog manure into natural gas, and a 150 MW solar farm. (Smithfield Times)
• A different Virginia planning commission approves rezoning for construction of a landfill gas processing plant. (WRIC) 

EFFICIENCY: Texas regulators will hold hearings on a company’s plan to install smart meters in the Panhandle region. (KFDA)

COMMENTARY:
• An activist who helped successfully fight a Memphis pipeline calls for more thorough consideration of environmental justice factors in local and federal decisions. (MLK50)
• Supply and demand amid the COVID-19 pandemic set up what will probably be the final fossil fuel boom as the U.S. increasingly veers toward clean energy, writes a columnist. (Houston Chronicle)
• Shell’s sale of its Permian Basin assets demonstrates oil and gas executives are increasingly worried about climate respectability, but the purchase by another oil company means emissions won’t actually be affected, writes a journalist. (Gizmodo)

Mason has worked as a journalist since 2001, covering Appalachian communities and the issues that affect them. He compiles the Southeast Energy News digest. Mason previously worked as a wildlife biologist before moving into journalism by freelancing at Coast Weekly in Monterey, California, before taking an internship in 2001 at High Country News. He wrote for the Enterprise Mountaineer in western North Carolina and the Roanoke Times in western Virginia before going freelance in 2012. His work has appeared in Southerly, Daily Yonder, Mother Jones, Huffington Post, WVPB’s Inside Appalachia and elsewhere. Mason was born and raised in Clifton Forge, Virginia, and now lives with his family and a small herd of goats in Floyd County, Virginia.