ELECTRIC VEHICLES:  Toyota announces it will build a $1.3 billion battery factory in North Carolina to support its electric car production after the state approved a $438.7 million incentive package. (Raleigh News & Observer)

ALSO:
• Toyota’s announcement is the culmination of a decade of work in Piedmont North Carolina to locate and prepare an industrial park in hopes of courting an automaker. (Greensboro News & Record)
• Federal regulators open an investigation into Tesla after a former employee complained the company failed to notify the public and shareholders about solar panel fire risks. (Reuters, Austin American-Statesman)
• British electric vehicle company Arrival announces it will build a high voltage battery module assembly plant in Charlotte, North Carolina. (news release)
• Georgia’s jobs economy is rising amid automotive and battery manufacturing investments, but a business leader cites concern about the state’s ability to keep up with workforce demands. (WABE)

OIL & GAS:
• Workers gather at the World Petroleum Congress in Houston to protest the more than eight-month-old lockout at an Exxon refinery and lube complex. (Beaumont Enterprise)
• The CEOs of Chevron and Exxon tell attendees at the World Petroleum Congress that carbon capture can enable fossil fuels to keep thriving even as the world shifts to cleaner energy. (Houston Chronicle)
• Photographers envision nearly a dozen oil and gas export terminals that plan to come online along Texas’ Gulf Coast over the next decade. (Texas Observer)
• Oil and gas tycoons are among the ultrarich Americans who have earned billions but managed to repeatedly avoid paying any federal income tax by claiming huge losses. (ProPublica)

PIPELINES: Mountain Valley Pipeline officials say a Virginia board’s rejection of a permit on its Southgate extension won’t affect the completion of the primary 303-mile pipeline. (Natural Gas Intelligence, subscription)

CLIMATE: Virginia receives $227.6 million for flood protection and low-income energy efficiency programs from its first year of participation in a regional carbon cap-and-invest market. (Virginia Mercury)

CARBON CAPTURE: A San Antonio-based company announces a $350 million investment in a firm to develop and build carbon capture and storage systems for industrial facilities and power plants. (San Antonio Express-News)

HYDROGEN: An Australian petroleum company plans to build a 290 MW hydrogen facility in Oklahoma that could eventually scale up to 550 MW. (Upstream)

GRID: A western Kentucky school district closes for the day after storm damage and power outages affect more than 9,000 members of an electric cooperative. (Murray Ledger & Times)

UTILITIES:
• Dominion Energy will give nearly 3,000 acres for three new South Carolina state parks as part of a settlement over a tax dispute. (Fox Business)
• A district manager for Northeast Mississippi Natural Gas Company says the post office lost or misplaced 4,000 of its customers’ bills, but payment is due by Dec. 10 anyway. (WTVA)

COMMENTARY: Texas’ power grid remains vulnerable to outages even after mass blackouts in February resulted in state lawmakers passing reforms designed to require weatherization and solidify natural gas supplies, writes a journalist. (Triple Pundit)

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.