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)
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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)