OIL & GAS: In Austin, Texas, the natural gas industry reveals its playbook for subverting local clean energy policy by pushing line-by-line revisions of proposed ordinances, activating customer opposition, and lobbying top state and local officials. (The Guardian/Floodlight)

ALSO: Texas scrambles to make up a $10 million shortfall in cleanup costs for a bankrupt company that left 173 abandoned wells across the state, spotlighting a growing problem as more oil companies go out of business. (Texas Observer/Grist)

***SPONSORED LINK: Check out the Squeaky Clean Energy Podcast by NCSEA! Get a fresh take on North Carolina’s clean energy landscape with biweekly episodes. Available wherever you get your podcast or at: www.energync.org/podcast.***

ELECTRIC VEHICLES:
• A dispute over electric-vehicle battery technology between two Korean companies goes to the White House after an international trade commission ruling threatens construction of a factory in Georgia. (Atlanta Journal-Constitution)
• Virginia lawmakers kill legislation to smooth the way for Dominion Energy to get into the electric school bus business. (Virginia Mercury)

POLITICS: U.S. Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia co-sponsors legislation to reinstate and expand up to $8 billion in tax credits for investment in clean energy technology, with a focus on coal communities. (E&E News, subscription; Charleston Gazette-Mail)

OVERSIGHT:
• Texas’ top utilities regulator resigns after last month’s historic power outages. (ABC News/Associated Press)
• The key architect of a shift by San Antonio’s municipal utility toward renewables is stepping down — a move the utility says was already in motion before last month’s outages. (San Antonio Express-News)
• A South Carolina agency that represents consumers before the utilities board raises eyebrows by hiring a lawyer who previously represented Dominion Energy. (Energy and Policy Institute)

GRID:
• Texas’ attorney general files suit against an electric provider, since disconnected from the grid, that charged wholesale rates that skyrocketed during last month’s storm and power outages. (Associated Press)
• A Texas county explores leaving the state’s electric grid after last month’s outages but finds that it likely doesn’t have the authority to do so. (Community Impact Newspaper)
• Dominion Energy will install a new transformer in northern Virginia to strengthen a neighborhood’s electric grid. (WDVM)

SOLAR:
• A rural Louisiana parish uses a 90-day moratorium on consideration of solar proposals to research and collect information ahead of an anticipated influx of companies seeking to build solar farms. (The Daily Star)
• A Texas city denies a request for a permit to install a rooftop solar system on the front of a house instead of the side or rear as allowed by ordinance. (Waxahachie Daily Light)

WIND: Dominion Energy will hold four public meetings today and tomorrow to collect comments on where to build power lines from its anticipated 188-turbine wind farm off the coast of Virginia. (WAVY)

ENERGY EFFICIENCY: Florida lawmakers introduce legislation to expand a financing program for renewables and energy efficiency to include home battery installation. (Florida Politics)

UTILITIES: Dominion Energy partners with electric cooperatives and a county government to expand broadband internet service in a rural Virginia community. (Culpeper Star-Exponent)

COMMENTARY:
• The debate over South Carolina utility Santee Cooper in the state legislature offers residents a chance to weigh in on the energy future they want, writes a professor and conservationist. (Spartanburg Herald-Journal)
• Joe Manchin’s introduction of a bill intended to accelerate clean energy investment offers a bipartisan path forward for coal communities, writes a West Virginia teacher and former congressional fellow. (Charleston Gazette-Mail)
• North Carolina can accelerate the growth of its electric vehicle market with supportive public policies, according to a regional clean energy group. (Southern Alliance for Clean Energy)
• While energy partisans blame different generation sources for last month’s outages in Texas, the biggest culprit was a deregulated electricity market designed to serve power providers and not customers, writes the director of Energy Fairness. (Utility Dive)

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.