ELECTRIC VEHICLES: Workers at a Tennessee Volkswagen plant that makes electric vehicles overwhelmingly vote to unionize, handing the United Auto Workers a major breakthrough in its push to organize Southeast auto factories. (Chattanooga Times Free Press)

ALSO: 

GRID: 

PIPELINES: A major CO2 pipeline leak this month in Louisiana that took more than two hours to fix should raise “alarm bells” about the country’s readiness to expand the carbon capture industry, advocates say. (Guardian)

SOLAR: An Arkansas climate group announces it will use $100,000 in federal funding to add solar panels at a resource center. (Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette)

OIL & GAS: 

GEOTHERMAL: Geothermal energy is on the rise in Texas due to rare consensus between the oil and gas industry and environmentalists in support of 2023 state legislation that paved the way for a new wave of startups. (The Hill)

WIND: A U.S.-built vessel that meets Jones Act requirements takes to the water ahead of Dominion Energy’s construction of an offshore wind farm near Virginia. (Canary Media)

RENEWABLE GAS: A BP subsidiary begins construction of a landfill-to-gas project in Virginia. (Roanoke Times)

EMISSIONS: The U.S. EPA’s proposal to clamp down on cancer-causing emissions from industrial plants prompts skepticism from the plastics industry but hope from residents in Louisiana’s “Cancer Alley.” (NOLA.com)

CLIMATE: 

COMMENTARY: 

  • The announcement of a planned Virginia battery plant is part of a larger story of how the Biden administration used federal legislation to reshore manufacturing and invest in new storage and electric vehicle technology, writes an editor. (Cardinal News)
  • Solar and batteries are increasingly boosting Georgia’s power grid, but the construction of more natural gas plants will improve reliability and reduce emissions from other fossil fuels, writes a state regulator. (Atlanta Journal-Constitution)

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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.