ACTIVISM:
• The founder and executive director of the Black Appalachian Coalition discusses the group’s mission to counter the longstanding erasure and exclusion of Black voices from policy discussions in the region. (Energy News Network)
• A fledgling Florida environmental group that fought a solar farm in a historically Black neighborhood is a finalist for a statewide Energy Innovator award. (WCJB)

CLIMATE:
• Climate-induced risks lead South Carolina’s Gullah Geechee and other communities to ask whether they should stage a managed retreat from flood-prone areas. (Associated Press)
• A North Carolina state senator and self-proclaimed “green brown girl” attends the COP26 climate change summit in Scotland. (WTVD)

OIL & GAS: A week after Florida regulators denied a company’s request to drill exploratory oil wells in the Everglades, environmental groups challenge another company’s proposal to drill two wells in the nearby Big Cypress National Preserve. (WUSF)

ELECTRIC VEHICLES: U.S. Sen. Joe Manchin says he won’t support a tax break for union-made electric vehicles because it would hinder Toyota’s plans to expand its West Virginia factory to produce hybrid transaxles. (Electrek, Parkersburg News & Sentinel, Charleston Gazette-Mail)

RENEWABLES: Entergy Mississippi’s plan to replace aging natural gas plants with 1,000 MW of solar and other renewables marks the largest expansion of clean energy in state history. (Delta Democrat-Times)

COAL ASH: The head of the Tennessee Valley Authority says 3 million tons of coal ash from a power plant will almost certainly be buried at a southeast Memphis landfill despite environmental groups’ attempts to prevent it. (Commercial Appeal, WHBQ)

UTILITIES:
• Clean energy advocates raise transparency concerns about how Memphis, Tennessee’s municipal electric utility is bidding out its electric supply as it explores leaving the Tennessee Valley Authority. (Commercial Appeal)
• The Tennessee Valley Authority extends its pandemic relief programs into 2023 after the utility reported a record $1.5 billion profit in 2021. (Chattanooga Times Free Press)

COAL:
• Virginia sees an uptick in coal mining activity driven largely by steelmaking coal. (Virginia Mercury)
• A judge’s decision to allow Kentucky regulators to collect interest on the $3 million penalty owed by West Virginia Gov. Jim Justice’s family coal companies could cost them hundreds of millions of dollars. (Charleston Gazette-Mail)

CARBON CAPTURE: Mississippi State University’s energy club wins $250,000 from a California nonprofit for a carbon capture project that uses sustainably sourced biomasses such as agricultural residues and improved force crops. (Commercial Dispatch)

COMMENTARY:
• U.S. oil and gas companies export large quantities of fuel into the international market and reap the windfall of post-pandemic demand by limiting supply, writes an energy columnist. (Houston Chronicle)
• Virginia regulators should deny a permit for the Mountain Valley Pipeline to cross streams because the project has a terrible record of violating erosion and sediment control rules, writes the chair of a Sierra Club group. (Virginia Mercury)
• The newly passed federal infrastructure bill includes a massive win for coal-affected communities with the largest-ever investment in abandoned coal mine cleanup, writes a member of an Appalachian advocacy group. (Appalachian Voices)

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.