Southeast Energy News is one of five regional services published by the Energy News Network. Today’s edition was compiled by Mason Adams.

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SOLAR: A company announces it will develop a 250 MW solar farm on 3,000 acres of a former West Virginia coal mine, which organizers say will be the largest solar project in the state. (WV News, Charleston Gazette-Mail)

ALSO:
• Entergy is increasingly developing solar power in Arkansas, with three major solar plants already in operation and two others on the way. (Arkansas Business)
More than 800 solar and storage projects in Virginia, Maryland and Pennsylvania are waiting in queue with transmission organization PJM Interconnection. (Chesapeake Bay Journal)
• A Texas city announces it will become the first in the state to run its municipal operations entirely on solar power, and will build a facility on a former landfill to fulfill its needs. (KXAS)

PIPELINES: An appeals court declines to reconsider its decision to strike down key permits for the Mountain Valley Pipeline, further delaying the project. (Roanoke Times)

OIL & GAS: Texas shale oil and gas producers resist expanding production despite high oil prices as investors push for slow-growth plans (Dallas Morning News)

COAL:
• Some of the Alabama miners striking against a coal company are making ends meet by working at an Amazon warehouse — where workers are also trying to unionize. (New York Times)
• The U.S. Department of Energy provides $3 million for a West Virginia project to test coal-derived building materials, including roof tiles, siding panels, bricks and blocks. (Bluefield Daily Telegraph)

EMISSIONS:
• West Virginia health and environmental officials try to convince residents cancer rates didn’t increase near facilities where the state measuring carcinogenic chemical emissions. (Charleston Gazette-Mail)
• Louisiana officials find a leak at a New Orleans plant that powers the city’s drainage and drinking water pumps is showering a nearby neighborhood with oil droplets. (WWL-TV)

ELECTRIC VEHICLES:
• Elected leaders in a small, majority Black community in Tennessee near Ford’s planned electric vehicle megasite file a lawsuit against the state comptroller to stop a financial takeover. (Tennessee Lookout)
• An electric vehicle supply company announces plans to build a factory in Georgia. (Atlanta Journal-Constitution)
• A North Carolina economic development official sees potential for more companies to locate around a likely electric vehicle production and supplier cluster. (Winston-Salem Journal)

GRID:
• A regional environmental group mobilizes against a proposal to build Amazon data centers, an electrical substation and high-power transmission lines in a Virginia county near two historical sites. (Culpeper Star-Exponent)
• Entergy completes an $86 million transmission system upgrade in a Louisiana community still recovering from Hurricane Ida. (Courier)

UTILITIES: Kentucky lawmakers sign a letter opposing the sale of Kentucky Power and ask that customers be refunded part of the profit from the sale. (Hazard Herald)

COMMENTARY: U.S. Sen. Joe Manchin and West Virginia Gov. Jim Justice’s deep connections to the coal industry undercut their participation in climate and energy transition conversations, writes an editorial board. (Beckley Register-Herald)

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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.