OIL & GAS: The founder of an oil and gas company discusses how its plan to build a gas facility in Louisiana played a key role in the national shift from importing to exporting natural gas. (NPR)

ALSO: Virginia climate activists organize against a planned Dominion Energy natural gas-fired power plant. (WTVR)

SOLAR:
• Duke Energy announces it will sell its rooftop solar business to a Boston-based firm as it shifts its focus to its regulated utilities. (WFAE)
• Amazon touts five Kentucky solar projects, including a 2 MW installation at an airport and a partnership with a sheep herder. (WVXU)
• Virginia Tech researchers receive a $3.4 million state grant to study the environmental effects of utility-scale solar installations. (news release)

ELECTRIC VEHICLES:
• Kentucky adopts a requirement that electric vehicle charging companies use Tesla’s plug if they want to qualify for federal funding offered through the state. (Reuters)
• Volkswagen increases production of its electric SUV at a Tennessee plant as sales spike. (Chattanooga Times Free Press)

PIPELINES:
• Mountain Valley Pipeline officials say they have no plans to remediate pipe offsite despite opponents’ arguments its coating has deteriorated from lying outside for years. (Charleston Gazette-Mail)
• The inclusion of a provision to force completion of the Mountain Valley Pipeline brings new scrutiny to the Biden administration’s plans for carbon capture and its enforcement of fines for oil spills and other accidents. (E&E News)

POLITICS: President Biden visits South Carolina today to tout a partnership between a solar firm and manufacturer projected to create 600 jobs in the state that’s benefitting from federal incentives. (Associated Press)

GRID:
• Virginia residents vent their frustration at Dominion Energy over its plans to build multiple new transmission lines. (Mecklenburg Sun)
• West Virginia U.S. Sen. Shelley Moore Capito presses federal regulators to hold meetings on how the U.S. EPA’s proposal to restrict greenhouse gas emissions from power plants might affect grid reliability. (Utility Dive)

CLIMATE:
• Kentucky county officials say they’ll use $2.6 million in coal severance tax revenue generated from the highest coal production in a decade to pay for recovery efforts from last summer’s historic flooding. (WXKQ)
• State and local Kentucky officials use federal funding to build housing for survivors of last year’s floods. (Kentucky Lantern)

UTILITIES: A study finds NextEra employed the nation’s highest paid utility CEO in 2022, who retired as its subsidiary Florida Power & Light was implicated for meddling in state political races. (Energy and Policy Institute)

CARBON CAPTURE: A company that wants to build an Arkansas carbon capture project will present to a state legislative committee at a meeting today. (El Dorado News-Times)

COMMENTARY:
• Southeast utilities typically lead the country for electric utility connections during the summer, including in states beneath the heat dome the last several weeks, write two researchers. (The Conversation)
• The burden of Texas’ oil and gas industry falls disproportionately on lower-income and Black and brown residents, but federal clean energy funding offers an opportunity for the state to rectify that legacy and build a new economy, write a professor and clean energy advocate. (Dallas Morning News)

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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.