BIOGAS: An environmental group files a complaint with federal regulators alleging that North Carolina’s issuing of biogas permits to four hog farms will disproportionately harm communities of color in the surrounding area. (Carolina Public Press)

PIPELINES:
• Environmentalists pressing a Virginia water board to deny certification to the Mountain Valley Pipeline are joined by social justice advocates voicing concerns about the effects of a pipeline compressor station on a nearby African American community. (WVTF)
• Facebook ignores Mountain Valley Pipeline’s request to reveal the identities of the anonymous creators of the Appalachians Against Pipelines page to protest and resist the pipeline’s construction. (Roanoke Times)
• West Virginia landowners who negotiated easements with the now cancelled Atlantic Coast Pipeline worry that the land might be used for a future pipeline or other project. (Mountain State Spotlight)
• An Oklahoma city pursues mediation and may eventually go to a jury trial to settle an eminent domain dispute rather than pay a landowner $2.8 million to acquire an easement for a water pipeline, saying the land is worth less now that a solar farm has canceled its lease. (Enid News & Eagle)

COAL: Some policy analysts predict West Virginia’s rising electricity rates will get worse as U.S. Sen. Joe Machin strips clean-energy provisions from a federal spending bill. (Charleston Gazette-Mail)

SOLAR:
• Georgia officials break ground on a 250 MW solar farm that will provide power to electric cooperatives and to an electric utility for a Facebook data center. (Associated Press)
• Two companies partner to develop 42 MW of solar power at 11 sites in central Virginia. (Solar Power World)
• A solar and energy storage company closes financing on a 270 MW solar farm currently under construction in Texas. (news release)

GRID: An Austin-based generator company sees sales surge after last February’s winter storm left thousands across Texas without power or water. (Austin American-Statesman)

POLITICS: Dominion Energy said it requested the return of a $200,000 contribution to a political action committee that used the money to attack the Republican candidate for Virginia governor, but the utility declines to answer whether that request has been granted. (Richmond Times-Dispatch)

WIND: Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam will make an announcement today at a marine terminal involving the state’s role as a “logistics hub for offshore wind energy” and is connected to Dominion Energy’s construction of an offshore-wind project. (WAVY)

CLIMATE:
• Hurricane Ida and the prospect of increasingly more climate-driven storms marked a tipping point that pushed some New Orleans residents to pack up and move elsewhere. (NOLA.com)
• A Texas county approves part of a 20-year project to restore its marshlands, beaches and dunes with funding that comes in part from a settlement over the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill. (Beaumont Enterprise)

COMMENTARY:
• Kentucky’s solar facilities offer real benefits to local communities that include helping secure significant investments by manufacturers such as Toyota, Dow and Ford, write a farmer and former environmental regulator. (Courier Journal)
• U.S. Sen. Joe Manchin’s determination to preserve fossil fuels and avoid an “entitlement mentality” ignores West Virginia’s existing reliance on government funding and virtually assures the state will remain reliant on federal handouts in the future, writes an editorial board. (Beckley Register-Herald)
• Decarbonizing heavy industry through carbon capture technology will require not just grants and tax credits but a cap or price on carbon emissions, writes a Houston energy consultant. (Houston Chronicle)

 

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.