After a decade of fights, Mountain Valley Pipeline enters service

PIPELINES: The Mountain Valley Pipeline begins pumping gas, completing an 11-year path from proposal to completion amid legal, regulatory and political challenges from opponents who still fear a rupture and explosion. (Roanoke Times)

SOLAR:

• Savannah, Georgia, sees much of its growth in rooftop solar installations coming from a rapidly growing neighborhood of new houses, townhomes and apartments. (Savannah Morning News)
• Georgia lawmakers form a study committee to preserve farmland against the development of utility-scale solar farms. (Capitol Beat News Service)

CLEAN ENERGY:

• South Korean companies have invested in electric vehicle, solar panel and battery factories in Georgia that will employ the equivalent of small towns, with officials from each place visiting the other in hopes of courting even more collaboration. (Atlanta Journal-Constitution, subscription)
• A clean energy startup attracts new rounds of investment as it aims to accelerate the clean energy transition in Texas through an electric vehicle leasing business and participation in its virtual power plant program. (Canary Media)

POLITICS:

• An analysis shows nearly 78% of the $346-billion-worth of announced investments funded by the 2022 climate package have gone to congressional districts represented by Republicans who voted against it, with Louisiana, North Carolina and Texas home to districts that have benefited most. (CNN)
• West Virginia’s elected officials and oil and gas industry hail the appointment of new federal energy regulators — including one from the Mountain State — they say can boost the state’s energy projects. (WV News, E&E News)

ELECTRIC VEHICLES: An Arkansas school district chosen to receive $1.2 million in federal subsidies mulls whether to move forward with buying six electric school buses. (Arkansas Democrat-Gazette)

NUCLEAR: The chancellor of Texas A&M system, which has one of the two largest nuclear engineering centers in the U.S., calls for the development of more nuclear plants to shore up the state’s independent power grid. (Austin American-Statesman)

GRID: The Texas Supreme Court reverses a lower court’s decision and finds state regulators were right to max out energy prices to avoid a grid collapse during the 2021 winter storm. (E&E News, subscription)

COAL: Kentucky fines a contracting company $31,500 for five work safety violations it found in an investigation in the deaths of two men when a coal preparation plant slated for demolition collapsed on them. (Kentucky Lantern)

STORAGE: A real estate company installs a battery storage facility in Texas. (Dallas Business Journal, subscription)

CLIMATE: Advocates warn Louisiana will need to find a new funding source for restoration to protect the state’s coastline as severe storms worsen and money set aside from the 2010 BP oil spill is set to run out by 2032. (NOLA.com)

COMMENTARY:

• Texas should not let the unfounded opposition of state leaders dissuade it from developing offshore wind energy, writes a professor. (Houston Chronicle)
• Duke Energy proposes to invest more in natural gas and continue to operate outdated coal plants in North Carolina despite the availability of renewables and the state’s carbon emission goals, writes a staffer at a clean energy group. (Southern Alliance for Clean Energy)