COAL: The coal industry’s decline ripples down to affect pay and working conditions for miners at Warrior Met Coal in Alabama — only a quarter of whom returned to work for the company after a lengthy strike. (Alabama Public Radio)

ALSO:
• Federal officials find 42 violations while inspecting a West Virginia mine operated by the family of Gov. Jim Justice. (West Virginia Watch)
• Republicans in West Virginia’s congressional delegation have been quiet about a federal agency’s proposal to lower permissible limits of exposure to toxic silica dust to protect coal miners from black lung. (Charleston Gazette-Mail)

STORAGE: Residents of a historic Black community near the Virginia coast organize against a planned battery storage project. (VPM, WVEC)

NUCLEAR: A judge dismissed fraud charges against the CEO of a company that failed to complete a botched $9 billion South Carolina nuclear plant after concluding that some of the grand jurors who handed down the indictment may have been biased because they were ratepayers. (Post and Courier)

SOLAR:
• Florida Power & Light buys about 7,000 acres of land along the Gulf Coast, and although its plans are still unclear, some point to its CFO’s remarks that the utility plans to build 3,100 MW of solar through 2025. (Business Observer)
• Florida Power & Light begins to see the benefits of building more than a dozen solar energy centers as it sets a new energy usage record with a peak load of almost 30,000 MW per hour. (WEAR)
• Tennessee homeowners seeking to add a solar array used a Tennessee Valley Authority program to research regulations and find an installer. (Herald-Citizen)

WIND: Federal officials choose three new areas, including a site off Virginia Beach, that could host offshore wind farms. (Baltimore Sun)

OIL & GAS:
• A decline in activity at Texas and Louisiana oil refineries due to high temperatures contributes to rising gas prices across the U.S. (Washington Post)
• A shale drilling company experiments with mining lithium from wastewater produced by drilling in the Permian Basin. (Bloomberg)

HYDROPOWER: Four dam failures on Texas’ Guadalupe River demonstrate the problems of aging infrastructure. (Wall Street Journal, subscription)

GRID:
• About 23,000 households in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, lost power during record-breaking heat due to severe storms and damage to grid infrastructure. (The Advocate)
• A Florida municipal utility reports it’s moved 75% of its electrical lines underground. (WKMG)

OVERSIGHT:
• Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp names a longtime state regulator to lead the state’s environmental agency, which faces challenges enforcing state coal-ash disposal rules and deciding whether to allow a company to mine near Okefenokee National Wildlife Refuge. (Georgia Recorder)
• A Louisiana regulator dismisses carbon capture as “untested, unproven science” in remarks to a Baton Rouge press club. (Louisiana Illuminator)
• Entergy seeks approval from Louisiana regulators for $5 billion in infrastructure upgrades and accompanying rate hikes, but a state commissioner says he expects regulators will delay until they pass new rules to strengthen oversight. (NOLA.com)

COMMENTARY: This summer’s extreme weather could shock more people into paying attention to climate change, but the clean energy transition offers hope, 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.