GRID: A booming northern Virginia county tries to cut greenhouse gas emissions while grabbing a piece of the region’s booming but energy-intensive data center industry, which Dominion Energy is accommodating with a grid buildout while activists push to preserve green space. (Energy News Network) 

COAL:
• Residents of a narrow Kentucky hollow where one person died in flooding and another is missing sue a coal company and its subsidiary for environmental damage that made last months’ flooding even worse. (NBC News)
• West Virginia regulators threaten to pull two mining permits from a coal company with 33 violation notices since the start of last year. (Charleston Gazette-Mail, subscription)

SOLAR: Residents in Virginia’s Tri-Cities region can access community solar programs beginning next year, with discounts for low- to moderate-income customers and no extra fees for 450 public housing residents and customers of a renewable energy company. (Progress-Index)

CLIMATE: Heavy rain saturates Texas, resulting in flooding and at least one death. (Texas Tribune, Austin American-Statesman, Reuters)

PIPELINES: The Mountain Valley Pipeline submits a plan to federal regulators to stabilize pipe on 3.5 miles of its route where court rulings have frozen construction. (Roanoke Times)

OIL & GAS: The University of Texas System’s holdings of crude and natural gas in the country’s largest oil field position it to overtake Harvard University as the richest U.S. higher education institution. (Bloomberg)

NUCLEAR:
• Arkansas regulators consider joining with Louisiana to pursue customer refunds from Entergy due to cost overruns and other problems at a Mississippi nuclear plant. (Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette)
• A Hitachi official argues for the affordability of small modular nuclear reactors as the cost of renewable power falls and critics point to cost overruns in Georgia and South Carolina as cautionary tales. (Utility Dive)

TRANSITION: Virginia county officials question a company’s request to rezone nearly 700 acres of land around a shuttered power plant largely from agricultural to industrial without specifying its intended use for the site. (Fredericksburg Free Lance-Star)

OVERSIGHT: Virginia calls for ideas and comments as it develops its four-year energy plan — a guiding document for state energy infrastructure. (Richmond Times-Dispatch)

EMISSIONS:
• North Carolina regulators will hold two public hearings today as they consider proposals for a carbon emissions reduction plan, including four from Duke Energy and one from environmental groups. (WRAL)
• Wilmington, North Carolina, officials discuss whether to sign onto a letter with other state localities criticizing Duke Energy’s emissions reduction plan for relying too much on fossil fuels, among other comments. (WHQR)

POLITICS: U.S. Sen. Joe Manchin warns House Democrats not to vote down legislation to streamline permitting for projects such as the Mountain Valley Pipeline, claiming doing so would slow renewables as well. (Washington Times)

COMMENTARY:
• Democrats’ Inflation Reduction Act marks a much-needed step toward curbing climate change, and Tennessee Republicans were stubborn and foolish to vote against it, writes an opinion editor. (Chattanooga Times Free Press, subscription)
• A lawyer discusses federal officials’ warning they may crack down on air pollution over the Permian Basin by redesignating parts of it as ozone nonattainment areas. (S&P Global, podcast)

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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.