ENVIRONMENTAL JUSTICE: Black and Hispanic residents of Lubbock, Texas, file a federal civil rights complaint to force the city to stop placing polluting industrial companies near their neighborhoods. (Texas Tribune)

ALSO: The first Black, first female, and youngest-ever mayor of a Mississippi town leads a campaign to block the expansion of more than 120 petrochemical projects in Louisiana, Texas, and the Ohio River Valley. (Yale Environment 360)

SOLAR:
• Officials from FirstEnergy subsidiaries tell members of a West Virginia energy board about plans to build five solar facilities on coal ash disposal sites. (Parkersburg News and Sentinel)
• Dominion Energy plans to build a solar farm on a Virginia landfill. (WCAV)
• A Virginia county board limits solar development to no more than 1% of the county’s total land mass. (WSET)
• A nonprofit announces a Florida solar cooperative program to obtain group discounts on rooftop installations for its members. (Herald-Tribune)

OIL & GAS:
• The Tennessee Valley Authority brings three new units totaling 750 MW online at an Alabama natural gas-fired power plant. (AL.com)
• A federal court rules the U.S. EPA went too far when it ordered a troubled oil refinery in the U.S. Virgin Islands to undergo a multi-year permitting process to restart operations. (E&E News)

NUCLEAR:
• Georgia Power announces it’s completed a series of safety tests on the second of two new nuclear reactors at Plant Vogtle, marking a step forward in its long-delayed expansion. (Atlanta Journal-Constitution)
• A Virginia company will develop a nuclear reactor and fuel for a demonstration spacecraft that uses nuclear thermal propulsion. (Cardinal News)

STORAGE: A Florida company commissions construction of a 300 MW battery storage facility in Texas. (news release)

TRANSITION:
• A company proposes to build a 7.5 million-square-foot data center in Virginia on the site of a former power plant. (Fredericksburg Free Lance-Star)
• West Virginia Gov. Jim Justice hails federal regulators’ approval of a company’s purchase of a 1,278 MW coal plant with plans to convert it to produce hydrogen. (Charleston Gazette-Mail, Weirton Daily Times)

PIPELINES: Two Virginia Congress members file legislation to require more public hearings and federal review for pipeline projects as West Virginia Gov. Jim Justice calls on the U.S. Supreme Court to greenlight construction for the Mountain Valley Pipeline. (Bluefield Daily Telegraph)

COAL: Duke Energy begins operating a lined landfill in North Carolina to store nearly five decades worth of coal ash from a nearby power plant. (WXII)

EMISSIONS: West Virginia regulators announce a public meeting after a chemical facility that was the site of a fatal 2020 explosion requests an air quality permit modification. (Charleston Gazette-Mail)

CLIMATE:
• A U.S. Senate committee interviews Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards and others about the effects of hurricanes, rising seas and other symptoms of climate change on infrastructure. (Associated Press)
• Scientists rush to save thousands of coral fragments in shallow nurseries threatened by record-breaking ocean temperatures off Florida. (Miami Herald)

FINANCE: Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis leads a coalition of 18 states to push against banks and investment firms that incorporate environmental and social goals. (Capital & Main)

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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.