COAL: A coal company owned by the family of West Virginia Gov. Jim Justice wants to reopen an Alabama plant that burns coal to make coke, despite a legacy of pollution in historically Black communities and thousands in unpaid fines. (ProPublica)

OVERSIGHT: Documents reveal the U.S. EPA and Louisiana regulators negotiated changes to fundamentally shift the state’s air pollution permitting program to crack down on emissions disproportionately affecting Black communities, until the process came to an abrupt halt in June. (WWNO)

CLIMATE:
• Florida and Georgia residents returning after Hurricane Idalia are shocked by the storm’s damage to their neighborhoods and homes. (WCTV, Associated Press)
• Beginning next year, Texas eighth graders will learn about climate change because of a curriculum overhaul, but advocates are still arguing over which textbooks they’ll use. (Texas Tribune)
• The University of Virginia releases a “roadmap” for localities in southern Virginia to assess their flood risks and resilience. (South Boston News & Record)

GRID:
• Duke Energy completes its assessment of Florida damages from Hurricane Idalia and projects restoration of power to 95% of customers in the hardest hit areas by this weekend. (Florida Politics)
• The CEO of Texas’ grid manager says the state came close to rolling blackouts last month, and warns power generators to change their approach to meet growing demand. (KVUE, Houston Chronicle)
• The Texas grid used eight conservation warnings to avoid unplanned outages this summer, but experts warn repetitive requests might eventually lead to state residents ignoring them. (Texas Tribune)
• New testimony reveals rolling blackouts on Kentucky’s coldest day last winter were caused not just by natural gas plant failures but coal as well. (Louisville Public Media)
• North Carolina officials now rule an elderly woman’s death when her oxygen concentrator failed to be a homicide, blaming gunfire attacks on electric substations that knocked out power to the area. (Washington Post)

SOLAR:
• A Korean company begins operating a solar panel factory in Georgia with an annual 2 GW capacity, even as it shutters a South Korean factory because of weaker demand. (Korea Economic Daily)
• An energy company secures financing to build a 120 MW solar farm in Oklahoma. (Power Technology)

OIL & GAS:
• Environmentalists and the oil industry sue the Biden administration over its plan to protect an endangered whale by scaling back an auction of oil and gas drilling leases in the Gulf of Mexico. (Associated Press)
• Louisiana officials say a fire at an oil tank has finally been extinguished, four days after it began. (WVUE)

ELECTRIC VEHICLES: Hyundai and battery maker LG say they’ll invest an additional $2 billion and hire 400 more workers at a sprawling electric vehicle and battery factory under construction in Georgia. (WABE)

BIOMASS: An energy company plans to invest nearly $2 billion into a former Louisiana paper mill into a plant that will produce green methanol using wood from local forests. (KALB)

NUCLEAR: West Virginia business and political leaders tout the potential for developing nuclear power in the state, but questions about cost, waste management and federal oversight remain unanswered. (Charleston Gazette-Mail)

UTILITIES: Duke Energy reaches a partial settlement on a multiyear rate case with North Carolina regulators, but did not come to an agreement on return on equity and capital structure. (S&P Global)

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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.