EFFICIENCY: Virginia nonprofits seek a wider range of funding for weatherization projects than a state energy efficiency fund endangered by Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s push to withdraw from a regional carbon market. (Energy News Network)

ALSO: Opponents of Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s efforts to withdraw the state from a carbon market warn that the resulting cutoff of hundreds of millions of dollars for energy efficiency and flood mitigation will disproportionately affect low-income residents and climate-vulnerable communities. (Inside Climate News)

PIPELINES:
• The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers awards the Mountain Valley Pipeline a long-elusive permit to cross hundreds of waterways, as required by a provision in legislation to raise the debt ceiling. (Roanoke Times; Wall Street Journal, subscription)
• Even as the Mountain Valley Pipeline finally moves toward completion, experts suggest it will run at only 35% of its capacity. (Huntington Herald-Dispatch)
• Residents along the Mountain Valley Pipeline’s route question the integrity of pipe that’s been lying aboveground for years while the project was delayed by regulators and court rulings. (Charleston Gazette-Mail)

SOLAR:
• Virginia solar developers ask state regulators to suspend Dominion Energy’s recent rules on connecting projects to the grid, complaining they use a generation calculation that’s increased costs and led to delays. (Virginia Mercury)
• Florida Power & Light develops a third nearly 75 MW solar farm in a Florida county. (NorthEscambia.com)
• An Arkansas solar company launches an electrical school with video and conferencing equipment to train its employees as they travel to install rooftop solar systems. (Arkansas Business)
• A Virginia community college will receive a state grant to support its solar workforce training program. (Cardinal News)

ELECTRIC VEHICLES:
• Hyundai raises its goal for annual sales of electric vehicles to account for a third of all sales by 2030 as it builds an EV factory in Georgia. (Bloomberg)
• A North Carolina-based electric vehicle charging company uses “networked energy” technology that allows for easy expansion of charger units to accommodate more vehicles. (Forbes)

STORAGE:
• Texas officials eye large-scale batteries as a way to harness wind and solar energy and stabilize the state power grid amid triple-digit temperatures and overstressed power plants and transmission lines. (Washington Post)
• A Korean battery maker commits to building factories, including in Georgia and Tennessee, that would increase its U.S. production capacity by a factor of more than 55 by 2027. (Canary Media)

GRID: The Texas Supreme Court rules that sovereign immunity protects the state grid operator from lawsuits over the 2021 winter storm that killed hundreds of people. (KUT)

HYDROGEN: A long-running effort to keep a West Virginia coal-fired power plant open takes a turn as a company launches a plan to convert the facility to run on hydrogen. (Politico)

OIL & GAS:
• High temperatures in Texas lead to a surge of activity at natural gas-fired power plants and an increase in fuel demand. (S&P Global)
• Shell restarts a Louisiana refinery after a power outage and fire took it offline. (Reuters)

NUCLEAR: The Tennessee Valley Authority considers sites in its seven-state territory to build small modular nuclear reactors. (AL.com)

CLIMATE:
• Texas continues to see record-breaking heat and severe storms that are testing the state power grid, although a drop in humidity is helping lower the heat index in some places. (San Antonio Express-News, Austin American-Statesman)
• As the Southeast suffers from a heat wave, Texas and other states take steps to reduce their residents’ water availability. (Slate)

COMMENTARY:
• Florida should build more solar and battery storage to strengthen the grid against hurricanes, writes a solar advocate. (Florida Times-Union/Invading Sea)
• The inclusion of a provision to force completion of the Mountain Valley Pipeline in a deal to raise the federal debt limit undermines President Biden’s environmental legacy, writes a climate activist. (Virginian-Pilot)

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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.