SOLAR: An environmental group in North Carolina pledges to appeal after losing its closely-watched bid to sell electricity to a church by ignoring Duke Energy’s exclusive right to sell electricity. (Greensboro News & Record, Charlotte Business Journal)
ALSO: An electric cooperative in Mississippi responds to members’ growing interest in solar energy. (Electric Co-op Today)
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COAL ASH:
• A heated fight over the civil rights of residents near a coal ash dump in Alabama prompts a libel suit by the dump’s owner. (Institute for Southern Studies)
• Virginia’s environmental agency sets a highly-anticipated public hearing for this Wednesday over ash left over from a now-closed coal-fired power plant. (Bristol Herald Courier)
FRACKING:
• Fayette County, West Virginia is part of a growing list of communities struggling to ban disposal of fracking wastes. (Think Progress)
• Newly obtained records show Kentucky officials were warned early on about the health risks of West Virginia fracking waste disposed of in landfills in the Blue Grass State. (Louisville Courier-Journal)
POLITICS: It’s becoming harder for some south Florida Republicans to work within their party as leaders continue to deny climate change. (National Public Radio)
CLIMATE: The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers launches a comprehensive assessment of flooding risks along much of the Gulf coast. (Miami Herald)
OIL & GAS:
• An oil company active in Mississippi and Louisiana files for bankruptcy. (The Wall Street Journal)
• A judge throws out some criminal charges filed over a 2012 oil platform fire that killed three people off Louisiana’s coast. (Associated Press)
PIPELINES:
• Dominion files a 7,000-page environmental impact statement with federal regulators about its planned Atlantic Coast Pipeline. (The News Virginian)
• Officials in a Virginia county ask federal regulators to reject a newly proposed route for the Atlantic Coast Pipeline. (The News Virginian)
• Businesses in a Virginia county join citizen groups’ calls for a broad federal review of proposed natural gas pipelines. (The News & Advance)
TRANSPORTATION: Declining local and state revenues from low gasoline prices prompt a budget crisis for transit systems in Northern Virginia. (The Washington Post)
WHOLESALE POWER: Newly released data show the cost to supply peak power this summer to utilities in parts of Arkansas, Louisiana and Mississippi dropped slightly while it rose in a small portion of Kentucky. (RTO Insider)
WEST VIRGINIA: Former five-term U.S. Sen. Jay Rockefeller calls on elected officials and business leaders to move more proactively to diversify the Mountain State economy. (SNL)
STORAGE: Yale University spotlights North Carolina-based Alevo Manufacturing’s GridBank product. (Yale Climate Connections)
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COMMENTARY:
• Virginia Republicans find a new way to block efforts to comply with the Clean Power Plan. (Power to the People VA blog)
• The benefits are too great for Virginia to drag its feet in complying with the Clean Power Plan. (The Roanoke Times)
• An environmental group adds its argument against allowing BP to deduct $15 million of its 2010 Gulf oil spill fine from taxes it owes. (Southern Alliance for Clean Energy)
• Is denying climate change tantamount to how tobacco companies denied the health impacts of smoking? (Arkansas Democrat-Gazette)
CORRECTION: An item in Friday’s digest misspelled name of the National Black Chamber of Commerce.