NUCLEAR: Regulatory ramifications of a failed South Carolina nuclear reactor project helped usher in reforms that are now leading Dominion Energy and Duke Energy to accelerate plans to retire their coal generation within a decade. (Post and Courier)

ALSO:
• Environmentalists are joining forces with Texas’ conservative Republican leadership to fight construction of a facility to store spent fuel and radioactive waste from nuclear power plants. (The Times)
• The Tennessee Valley Authority gives up its construction permit on an unfinished Alabama nuclear plant after a planned sale fell through. (Chattanooga Times Free Press)
• A man who pleaded guilty to shipping low-level nuclear waste without proper labeling to a Kentucky landfill receives probation but no prison time. (Lexington Herald-Leader)

TRANSITION:
• Labor unions and environmental groups in Texas, West Virginia and other states collaborate to find ways to address the climate crisis by focusing on creating unionized jobs and ways to reverse economic inequities. (Guardian)
• Southwestern Virginia communities look to renewables and energy research to diversify their formerly coal-dependent economics. (Virginia Mercury)
• A West Virginia lawmaker cheers the award of transportation contracts as part of a plan to build a multi-use development site at a 12,000-acre reclaimed surface mine. (WV Metro News)
• A series of tourism-related projects in southwestern Virginia receive a round of loans and grants from a regional economic development authority. (Bluefield Daily Telegraph)

WIND: Republican Georgia lawmakers in coastal districts say they’re opposed to offshore wind development because it would affect views and bird populations. (Brunswick News)

PIPELINES:
• Atlanta Gas Light will activate a newly installed pipeline in Georgia this week. (Rome News-Tribune)
• Western Virginia landowners continue to challenge the Mountain Valley Pipeline’s use of eminent domain nearly four years after developers started the legal process, with one case being heard in federal appeals court. (Roanoke Times)

OIL & GAS: Louisiana wildlife officials release the first birds among dozens that were covered in oil by spills resulting from Hurricane Ida into a wildlife refuge. (Houma Today)

POLITICS:
• As chair of the chamber’s energy panel and a beneficiary of coal profits, U.S. Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia prepares to remake President Biden’s climate legislation in a way that tosses a lifeline to the fossil fuel industry. (New York Times)
• Hurricane Ida changes city council elections in New Orleans, both by delaying them from October and by giving candidates a new focal point. (NOLA.com)

COAL: Two major funds to address coal’s effects on land and the lungs of miners that depend almost entirely on the industry’s declining revenues and congressional support that will come up for renewal soon. (Ohio Valley ReSource) 

GRID: Appalachian Power plans upgrades to its electric transmission network in southern Virginia. (WFXR)

COMMENTARY:
• The Texas retail gas station chain Buc-ee’s provides a possible model for the kind of highway stops that will entice motorists to stay longer while their electric vehicles charge up, writes a columnist. (Bloomberg)
• The development and deployment of inexpensive hydrogen has the potential to dramatically address climate goals, writes the president and CEO of a Houston-area nonprofit. (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.