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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SOLAR: Residents of conservative northwest Florida say their outrage at Florida Power & Light and its handling of winter price hikes was a catalyst in Gov. Ron DeSantis’ veto of an FPL-backed bill to end net-metering. (Miami Herald)

ALSO: An energy company secures a contractor to build a planned 164 MW solar farm in Texas. (Energy Global)

WIND:
• Tomorrow’s lease auction for an offshore wind site near North Carolina marks a significant step toward achieving federal energy goals in a state that hasn’t yet formally codified its commitment to wind power. (S&P Global)
• Federal officials pre-qualify 16 companies to participate in tomorrow’s Carolina Long Bay wind energy lease sale. (OffshoreWind.biz)
• A West Virginia wind energy project to supply Toyota and American Electric Power finds bipartisan support even as U.S. Sen. Joe Manchin remains a crucial holdout vote on federal climate legislation. (Washington Post)

ELECTRIC VEHICLES:
• A federal agency says 19 unmarked graves were found at the site of Ford’s planned electric vehicle battery plants in Kentucky. (Courier Journal)
• Volkswagen will host a job fair Saturday as it gears up to expand its Tennessee plant into its North American hub for electric vehicle manufacturing and battery pack assembly. (Associated Press)
• A Texas company that installs electric vehicle chargers uses Instagram to record where EVs are spotted and then pitches building chargers in those areas. (KRIV)

UTILITIES:
• Kentucky regulators approve the sale of Kentucky Power from American Electric Power to Liberty Utilities. (WTVQ)
• Duke Energy sees higher revenues but lower profits in the first quarter of 2022 because of expenses during January’s winter storms and $250 million in coal ash costs. (WFAE)
• A Mississippi school district receives a $100,000 grant from the Tennessee Valley Authority for energy upgrades as part of a TVA pilot program. (WCBI)

CLIMATE: Eastern Tennessee becomes a destination for people looking to escape tornadoes, hurricanes, severe floods, wildfires and other extreme weather made worse by climate change. (WVLT)

COAL: Western Kentucky localities lose coal severance tax revenue as companies increasingly close coal mines and withdraw from that part of the state. (WFIE)

OIL & GAS: The natural gas industry looks to the Southeast’s Haynesville Shale formation as a likely hub for third-party certification of cleaner natural gas because of its low emissions profile and proximity to export terminals. (S&P Global)

HYDROGEN: A Houston-area nonprofit group spearheading the push to make the Texas Gulf Coast a hydrogen hub suggests the Corpus Christi port could become a strategic export hub. (S&P Global)

COMMENTARY:
• U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz blames rising energy prices not on the Russian invasion of Ukraine but federal policies that halted leasing of new oil and gas and permitting of new pipelines. (Dallas Morning News)
• Georgia Power is using its privilege as a protected, state-regulated utility to insist on leaving toxic coal ash buried where it’s exposed to groundwater, writes the president of a newspaper chain. (Georgia Recorder)

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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.