Southeast Energy News is one of five regional services published by the Energy News Network. Today’s edition was compiled by Mason Adams.

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COAL: Miners have been striking against an Alabama coal company for a year, but say their morale remains high as they seek better pay and benefits. (AL.com)

SOLAR:
• The Tennessee Valley Authority partners with Facebook’s parent company and others to build a 70 MW solar farm in Tennessee. (Chattanooga Times Free Press)
• Dominion Energy proposes building an 80 MW solar farm in a rural Virginia county. (Kenbridge Victoria Dispatch)
• A Virginia county planning commission sets a hearing for a proposed 1 MW solar farm. (Daily Progress)
• A Virginia car dealership adds nearly 100 kW of rooftop solar. (Solar Power World)
• Legislation passed by Florida lawmakers would cut incentives for rooftop solar owners, allow utilities to raise the cost of switching to renewable energy and essentially erase “the only pro-solar policy in Florida,” activists say. (The Guardian)

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ELECTRIC VEHICLES:
• A North Carolina county calls on state officials to fund a shift from diesel to electric school buses. (Greensboro News & Record)
• An Atlanta car dealership sees a spike in demand for electric vehicles as gas prices rise. (WGCL)

NUCLEAR: The Tennessee Valley Authority seeks comments on its proposal to install advanced nuclear reactors at a Tennessee plant. (Oak Ridger)

MINING: A West Virginia researcher tells a U.S. Senate panel about the possibilities of recovering rare earth elements and other materials from acid mine drainage that can be used in clean energy and high tech components. (Charleston Gazette-Mail, subscription)

RENEWABLES: Georgia Power’s shift to renewable power is making the state more attractive to data centers. (Atlanta Business Journal, subscription)

BIOMASS: A biomass energy company sells its controversial, failed North Carolina wood pellet factory to a real estate company. (N.C. Policy Watch)

CLIMATE: The combination of climate change, pollution and wildfires has created a synergistic effect that has intensified the allergy season in Texas, experts say. (San Antonio Report)

CARBON CAPTURE:
• A gas and oil company tells investors a planned carbon removal facility in the Permian Basin could cost up to $1 billion. (E&E News, subscription)
• Two senators and a Congress member from West Virginia urge the EPA to fast-track state applications to assume oversight for carbon capture projects. (news release)

HYDROGEN: President Joe Biden and U.S. Sen. Joe Manchin both advocate for hydrogen as a power source that can reduce carbon emissions, but Biden sees it as a renewable source while Manchin envisions it as a byproduct of fossil fuels. (E&E News, subscription)

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UTILITIES: A clean energy generation and distribution company will open an office in Houston. (Houston Chronicle)

COMMENTARY:
• Other cities should replicate a Texas city’s plan to power all of its municipal operations by developing a solar farm on a former landfill, writes an editorial board. (Dallas Morning News)
• An editorial board celebrates the announcement of an electric vehicle factory in North Carolina after the state has tried for years to attract an auto manufacturer. (Greensboro News & Record)
• Regulators should look for ways to lower the cost of Dominion Energy’s planned  $9.8 billion wind farm off Virginia’s coast, but that estimate doesn’t incorporate economic development, job growth and the state’s need for cleaner energy, writes an energy columnist. (Virginia Mercury)

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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.